


Dial E for Esper

by Marie_L



Series: Angelo's family [1]
Category: The Pretender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Language, F/M, Fatherhood, Rape Recovery, Romance, Season/Series 03, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-07
Updated: 2013-10-07
Packaged: 2017-12-28 17:33:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 32,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/994662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Marie_L/pseuds/Marie_L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jarod locates Angelo's family, but it turns out they have secrets of their own.</p><p>The non-con warning is for chapter 11. Nothing happens in the story but it is nevertheless a very triggery chapter; please skip if this is an issue for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Red Files Redaction

Jarod sat in the dim room, the projector lights flickering over a table strewn with Pez and scraps of paper. Eight red files. Eight film reels with very young children performing cognitive tests. He paused to change reels, back to his own for the fifth time that day. He had already digitized the all the films, but there was something satisfying in watching the scratchy originals, looking for faint clues.

When he had initially found the files in the NuGenesis basement, he had only had time for a quick survey of the written records, plus a brief glance at the film to identify which child was which. He had managed to cross- reference a few of them with Catherine Parker's rescued children photos to get a preliminary identification of all the children, but that was it. Due to the events of the past few weeks -- the Angel Manor raid, Angelo's recovery and subsequent regression, Fenigor's death-bed revelations, nearly getting blown to bits, Sydney going blind -- there just hadn't been time to properly dissect the Red Files. Jarod had another pretend planned, but he was willing to spend a day or two first on the problem. 

On cursory glance back at NuGenesis, the files appeared to contain little of value. The written files contained dates, physical measurements, cryptic acronyms related to obscure blood tests, and equally inscrutable notes that Jarod later deciphered as the results of each child's performance on the cognitive tests. Names were not included and the only likely addresses were under the heading "destination," redacted out. The films themselves had no obvious identifying features either, but were fascinating nonetheless. Miss Parker, for instance, had been an adorable, hilariously bossy five year old. Timmy was a little strange even pre-kidnapping, staring at his interviewer for uncomfortable lengths of time before answering any questions. Kyle looked bored, as if he had done similar testing on many previous occasions, and had scored the best out all of them. Alice and himself were the most eager to please, looking at the interviewer for validation at every question.

It broke Jarod's heart a little, knowing that all of their parents were probably right outside during the testing. There was no sign of them on the actual film. The camera had been shut off immediately after testing, eliminating all adult chit chat.

As Jarod began to watch them in detail, certain clues began to pop out. For one thing, most of the testing occurred not at NuGenesis, but at what appeared to be different school settings for each child. That told him that children were not being brought to single location, but that the Centre had been screening them in different communities, likely under the guise of the local school system. It was possible some school districts may still have records, particularly if they had screened large numbers of students. Another lead to follow up on, around Delaware at least to start. 

Another clue: he was almost certain that Miss Parker's and Kyle's testing had taken place at the Centre. Miss Parker had been in one of the conference rooms in the Tower, judging by the bright sunlight from the windows and Art Deco decor. Kyle, though, had been in an utterly featureless room. Jarod had no proof that it was in one of the sublevels, except for the gut feeling that came with living 30 years in that cement bulkhead hell. Everything about it felt like the Centre, even the tone of the unseen interviewer, who was harsher than with the other children, less like a teacher and more like taskmaster ordering his captive around.

After awhile he turned his attention from the old reels and back to the paper files. Something about the "destination" lines bothered him. The areas that had been blacked out took up much more room than was necessary to write out, say, "SL-27." If the paper had been modern photocopies then uncovering the missing words would have been quite difficult, but the old mimeographs might leave a trace of the redacted material. Using an ultraviolet light on his own file, he was barely able to make out:

_Destination: SL14/S Green, loc: 240 rte 1, Charlevoix MI_

It was information he already had, but Jarod was gratified by the discovery anyway. For once, independent confirmation that he existed. He had a life before the Centre.

He rifled through the pile of papers to decipher the other children's addresses. Henry and Alice, two children he had identified using Catherine Parker's photos, were both listed as _Destination: SL14/J Green_. A cursory public records search indicated that Henry's address was an apartment building in Detroit that had been torn down to make way for a freeway in 1968, while Alice's belonged to a home in Massachusetts that had been sold seven times since the 60s. Dara's file ( _Destination: SL14/S Green_ ) had burned down in 1967 and the lot was currently owned by a subsidiary of the Centre. Bobby's file ( _Destination: leave in vivo/Raines_ ) listed the Bowmans' Nebraska address. Miss Parker's and Kyle's contained no "destination" line at all, not even redacted, leading further credence to his theory that Kyle was already at the Centre at the time of testing.

That left Timmy. Angelo. _Destination: SL27/Raines, loc: 45 Hales rd, Fleetwood PA_

Jarod's breath caught when he checked the county records. The address belonged to an 80-odd acre property in rural eastern Pennsylvania, zoned for agricultural use. The owners had been the same since 1956: Joan and Roger Wallace. Prior to that another man named Wallace had owned the property, and a bit of poking around at the neighbors revealed that several other nearby farms, too, were owned by Wallaces. 

It was a long shot, but Jarod decided to do a Nexis search for variations of "Tim Wallace missing/disappear/kidnap 1967," Angelo's intake year according to the red file. Most newspapers didn't have online archives going back that far yet, especially the smaller local papers, so odds were he'd have to trudge down there and dig through some community library's microfiche. But he'd been lucky so far with just the address, so it was worth a shot. And there it was, the very first hit, a tiny filler item in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

 

_NOVEMBER 13, 1967 --_

_The search continu_ _es in rural Berk_ _s_ _County for Timothy Wallace, 6, who has been missing since Monday._ _Fleetwood sheriff's office_ _believe_ _s_ _he may have wandered into the woods while walking home from school. Tips and_ _volunteer_ _inquiries can be made at 555-690-5358_.

 

That was it. Jarod closed his laptop, leaned back in the office chair and tapped his fingers rhythmically as he mused. He'd found Angelo's family. He was sure of it.

 


	2. Pennsylvania

Jarod's next stop turned out to be a local historical society, not library. He wanted to do some preliminary investigation into the family and the missing Timothy before showing up at the Wallace's door. The Berks County Historical Society was run by a short, portly, enthusiastic woman who, Jarod guessed, didn't get many visitors.

"Hello, nice to meet you. I'm Dr. Jarod Ratchet. I'm a psychiatrist doing a study on the long-term effects of missing children on their communities and families. I was hoping you could help me find some information." He'd just used this alias wrapping up another pretend; may as well reuse it while he had the ID and suit.

The woman shook his hand vigorously. "Oh, yes, this is about the Wallace children? _Such_ a shame. One of our oldest families, good people."

Jarod frowned. "Child _ren_? I'm only familiar with the boy's case, Timothy Wallace. Have there been other children in the area who have disappeared?"

"Well, they had that girl go missing a few years ago at college. Runaway supposedly, although the family always said otherwise. Just before Thanksgiving I think? Let's see." She pulled bound copies of the county newspaper off a shelf and flipped through a few years' worth of November editions. "Here we go." She slid the volume across the table to him. There was a graduation-type photo of a smiling teenager.

 

_LOCAL GIRL MISSING FROM CMU CAMPUS_

_NOVEMBER 20, 1984 --_

_Eighteen-year-old Annalise Wallace, from outside Fleetwood, hasn't been seen on the Carnegie Mellon campus since Nov. 15. Pittsburgh police believe she likely ran away due to a breakup with her boyfriend and conflict with her family, based on personal diary entries left in her dorm room. The Wallace family and the boyfriend, however, claim foul play was involved._

_"I know Annalise better than I know myself, and she didn't run away," said Jason Biggs, 21. "There was no breakup. She wasn't depressed or upset. I was supposed to go to Thanksgiving with her family next week. It doesn't make any sense."_

_Wallace's father, George Wallace, concurs. "She didn't show any signs of being unhappy with her studies, Jason, or anything else. Why would she run away when everything in life was going fine? We urge the police to look into the possibility that diary is fake and that she has been kidnapped."_

_Detective John Willis has investigated the case and concluded nothing untoward has happened. "We found clothing and personal items missing from her dorm room, and statements in her diary indicating she was unhappy with her personal relationships and thinking of moving to the West Coast. Unfortunately for the family, she is legally an adult and we cannot chase her across the country."_

_Annalise Wallace is one of the youngest students to receive a perfect 1600 on her SATs in Pennsylvania history, and the only known homeschooled student in the state to receive the National Merit scholarship. She is known in Berks County for her outspoken defense of legal rights for homeschoolers during her high school years._

_Her family would appreciate hearing from anyone with information on her whereabouts, 555-690-5546._

 

Everything about the article set off Jarod's foul play alert. If he had read that in a current day newspaper it would have been out in a red notebook before getting to the third paragraph, even without the potential Angelo connection. The timeline and age of the girl didn't make sense for the Pretender project, though. If she was taken by the Centre, it was for some project of which he was unaware, which was never a good sign. "They never found her?"

"Not that I'm aware of. Not the little boy either, her cousin Timmy. They never found his body, though. We've probably got some articles on that around here somewhere."

Jarod thanked her and took copies of the articles. "The Wallace family, what are they like? How have they held up?" 

The woman paused for a moment before responding. "Have you gotten permission to talk to them yet? They're not big on people prying into their personal business. Like their privacy, keep to themselves. Simple life in the country, a little like the Amish."

Jarod gave her his brightest reassuring smile. "I'll take responsibility, don't worry. They are Amish?"

"No, no, an old Quaker family I think, one of the last around here. They just tend to be traditional small farmers is all. You should just go out there and talk to them and ask them yourself. Just be honest with them. It's well known in these parts to never lie to a Wallace. They can always tell."

"I'll keep that in mind."

 

******

 

Jarod headed out in his rental to Joan and Roger Wallace's farm. It was a stunningly lovely June day, and idyllic country too. Small farms dotted the countryside with an occasional gentle hill and frequent patches of dark deciduous woods in full leaf. He left the AC off and rolled down the window, just to feel lush life-rich early summer air waft over him. He couldn't imagine a better environment to grow up in. Or perhaps it was a worst place to be stolen from.

He pulled into the long gravel driveway up to a traditional colonial-style farmhouse. He considered the words of the historical society lady, and briefly wished he'd picked a less authoritarian persona. A reporter would have been better, but it was too late to change it now; in small towns word got around, and the woman seemed like the gregarious type. Half the borough might know of the "psychiatrist" interviewing the Wallaces by now.

He got out and knocked on the door. A homily dark haired woman in her early forties answered the door. "Can I help you?" she said with a slight smile.

"Do Joan and Roger Wallace still live here?"

"Joan's my mother, and she does live here. My father died some years ago. Can I ask what this is about?"

Jarod took a breath and started his spiel. "I'm Dr. Jarod Ratchet. I'm a psychiatrist studying the psychological effects of missing children on families. I know it is probably a delicate subject, but would it be possible to interview your mother about your brother Tim?"

The woman just looked at him for a moment, the smile not really wavering. "Jarod. I see. Can you wait here a minute, Jarod?" And she closed the door on his face.

He stood there a moment, praying he hadn't scared them off. Maybe honesty _would_ have been a better policy, but keeping himself a secret from people was just reflexive at this point. Then the door opened, and the still-kindly woman invited him in. She ushered him through the entryway to small living room, where a wizened older woman with bright blue eyes and a scowl on her face was sitting in an well-worn armchair, glaring at him.

The younger woman turned around and looked at him. "Hi, I'm Cathy Wallace. This is my mother Joan." She held out her hand to shake.

As he shook her hand, Jarod had a very odd sensation faintly in his mind, as if someone were very, very lightly brushing the back of his brain. He was suddenly aware that they had been shaking hands for a much longer period of time than was socially acceptable.

Cathy looked him straight in the eye and said, "Are you the Jarod from the Centre?" He was so shocked by the question he dropping her hand and couldn't stammer a reply. 

The old woman rolled her eyes and spit out, "Don't bother giving us your lies, boy. Didn't anyone ever tell you not to lie to a Wallace? Are you from the Centre or not?" Cathy walked over and touched her mother's hand, resting on the arm of the chair.

_To hell with it_ , thought Jarod. _If they're going to be direct, I will be too._ "Yes. I was raised by the Centre. In a manner of speaking."

"You were one of the kidnapped children?" Cathy asked.

"Yes. How do you ...?"

"Do you work for them now?"

"No!" He was getting frustrated now. "I escaped from the Centre two years ago. I've been looking for my family, and came across information on Ange ... Timmy's family. Can _I_ ask some questions now?"

The two woman merely looked at each other. Cathy spoke again. "In 1970, a couple of years after Timmy went missing, a woman named Catherine came to see us. She said that Tim had been kidnapped by an organization that was performing psychological experiments on children. She and at least one of the other parents were planning on rescuing them. We were told to be at a certain place in Delaware at a certain time for pickup. No one showed up."

Jarod nodded. "Catherine Parker was killed the day after she failed to rescue the children ... us."

Joan looked slightly less angry. "Is it true that my son was brain damaged during an experiment? That they changed his name?"

"Yes." Jarod wondered how they knew that. Whatever Raines had done to Angelo, it had happened just before Catherine Parker's murder.

"Is it true that they altered his abilities, so now he can get empathic readings off of objects?"

Jarod noted the strange wording of the question, but chose not too push it. "Yes."

"Is he in any imminent danger right now?"

"I don't believe so. They occasionally ask him to do things with his abilities" ... _like hunt me down_ ... "but mostly they just leave him alone. His speech and emotional affect are ... severely impacted." He didn't mention Angelo's recently failed serotonin treatment. It would only cause more heartbreak.

Joan and Cathy glanced at each other again. Cathy spoke this time. "Jarod, we need to discuss something with some family members before we can go any further. Can you come back tonight around 7 pm?" She ushered him towards the door.

"Come ... back?"

"Don't worry hon, we're not going to call up those horrible people and rat on you. Go grab a bite to eat. There's a diner down the road a couple of miles, near the school. You look like you've seen a ghost." And she closed the door in his face. Again.

He stumbled down to the car and began driving aimlessly around, trying to get a grip on what the hell just happened.

 

******

 

At precisely 7 o'clock he slowly drove up to the house. He doubted they would sell him out, but their strange behavior made him cautious anyway. There appeared to be no sign of sweepers, however. Joan met him at the door.

"Go to Portland, Oregon, the day after tomorrow. She'll meet you at Pioneer Courthouse Square, at the top of the stairs, at noon."

" _She?_ Who's she?" 

Joan gave him a withering look, like he was a dim child who didn't yet comprehend what everyone else already understood. Not a look he got very often.

"Why Annalise, of course. She has some information about your family."


	3. Demolition

 

Jarod flew into Portland the next day, the day before his meeting with Annalise, to scope out the area and secure escape routes, if need be. He stashed the DSA player and his other belongings at a low-rent hotel a few blocks south of the square, prepaid for a week in case he had to make a run for it and come back for everything later. There was no unusual activity in the square or elsewhere in downtown Portland, however, and the Centre usually wasn't that subtle. Pioneer Courthouse Square was a large brick-lined, city-block sized public space which sloped gently downward from one of its corners. The top of the stairs gave one a view of the entire block and several adjoining cross streets. It would take a very large -- and very public -- security force to capture someone in that location. It occurred to Jarod that the person who chose the meeting place, too, did not want to be caught.

At noon the next day he waited at the top of the stairs, trying not to look too conspicuous, but he needn't have bothered. The square was packed at lunchtime during the summer, with commuters, teenagers, and other assorted colorful characters hanging out on the stairs and at a nearby train station. At 12:03, a train arrived and among others a young woman carrying a coffee cup stepped off, looked around and approached him. She did look somewhat like Angelo, with dishwater blond hair put back into simple ponytail, blue eyes, no makeup. She was notably older than the picture in the newspaper article, in her early thirties now, but was clearly the same person. He thought she looked like a pretty woman who was trying to appear as plain and unremarkable as possible.

"Jarod?" He nodded slightly. "Hi, I'm Annalise," she said, and stuck out her hand. He took it --

and his mind _s_ _hrieked_

_\-- i decide who lives or dies -- what is it like to be hugged -- it's too late_ _j_ _arod -- tell me who my parents are --_ _you exist --_ _this is where you came from -- let him be a boy -- forgive me -- i don't like to be watched -- you're going to get caught -- there's a bomb -- they stopped my heart --_ _i made this for you sydney --_ _the code word_ _makes it stop_ _\--_ _i'll never forget about her --_ _they're going to take another child --_ _this is what you look like -_ _-_ _the van driver will have to die -- you're not a monster -- you know the dance miss parker ­-- i'm not really a_ _plastic surgeon_ _\-- there is no timmy -- where are my mom and dad -- where -- where -- where_

 

Annalise let go of his hand, and Jarod began to black out and crumple towards the ground. He wanted to scream but found he had no autonomous muscle control. The assault felt as if someone had stabbed a butcher knife into his skull and was slowly flicking out bloody slivers of his brain, one memory at a time. Annalise caught him and gently helped lower him to a sitting position down on the bricks.

"Hey, is that guy all right?" Jarod was dimly aware that a passerby had seen him fall. He was agonizingly close to vomiting. He still couldn't see.

"Yeah, he's fine, he's just a little dizzy. He'll be fine in a moment." She sat next to him for that minute with his head in his hands until his vision cleared a minuscule amount, then set the coffee cup down next to him. There were four small brown pills on top of it. "Ibuprofen and a triple espresso. The scan causes a sudden constriction of blood vessels in the brain. Some sort of defense mechanism we think." He ignored her and concentrated anew on not throwing up all over the square.

Annalise edged away from him, giving him a bit of space, then flipped open a cell phone and dialed. "Hey it's me. Yeah it's really him. No. No. We'll be home by dinner no problem." 

Jarod jerked his head up through the fog of the migraine. "What makes you think I'll go anywhere with _you_?" he hissed. He began to frantically scan the area, assessing potential escape routes. It was a ridiculous position to be in; he had six inches and fifty pounds on her, so she shouldn't be able to take him anywhere. But he was the one who still couldn't stand.

She studied him for a long moment, a mixture of utter regret and resignation on her face. Finally she took something out of her pocket. It was a close-up photograph of herself and a young girl, both with their arms around each other, grinning. "This is my daughter Miriam. She's your daughter too. She's twelve."

Jarod ripped the photo out of her hand and willed his eyes to focus. The girl did look about eleven or twelve. She resembled her mother in a few ways, in the shape of her eyes, in her jaw. But she had completely different coloring: she had much darker hair, eyes, skin tone. She had a beautiful wide smile. With dimples. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the photograph in his hand, trying to think. 

The attack ... scan ... whatever he had just experienced, it was the most powerful telepathic display he'd ever encountered or even heard of. He had seen some interesting hints at telepathy in Sydney's lab over the years, and had seen Angelo do some frankly incredible things, but even he couldn't drop a full grown man with the power of thought alone. It was obvious why the Centre would want to possess a person with such a skill, were they to become aware of it.

"The Centre ... they wanted to create a child that was both telepathic and a Pretender?" After his recent experiences with Davy and SL-27 ... he had to admit it was plausible. 

"I don't think that was their original plan when the kidnapped me, but it's what they settled on once they got me. I wasn't exactly cooperative in my time with the Centre. In fact, until today I didn't really know what the hell a Pretender was supposed to be. The lab tech I scanned to get your name was a little vague on the details."

"How do you know for sure it's me?"

She just looked at him. "I don't know for sure. All I ever got was a name. You lived there most of your life, so you tell me: Is there somebody else who is a more likely candidate?"

"No." It had been one of his greatest fears, once he'd realized the extent both of the Centre's malfeasance and their obsession with him. In point of fact, before handing Davy over to the Brewsters he had run some basic satellite markers comparing all three NuGenesis kids to himself and Angelo, just to be certain. It was almost disappointing they all came back as unrelated. 

He studied the photo some more. "Does she want to meet me?"

"Are you kidding? She's _dying_ to meet you. She's always wanted to know what you were like. My biggest fear coming up here today wasn't that it was a Centre trap, but that you'd turn out to be a sociopath. Then what would I have done? She'd still want to meet you."

Jarod couldn't help but think of Kyle. How would he have reacted to such a personal assault? Not favorably he guessed. "Is she ..." He couldn't articulate what he wanted to say.

"Is she like me, or maybe is she like you? Well, she's definitely like me, although not as strong. Very few are. But she's a Wallace kid, that's for sure. As for is she like you ..." She held out her hand to help pull him up. "You're going to have to come down to the farm and judge for yourself."


	4. Annalise's Tale

Annalise pulled the rusty junker up to the front of the St. Francis hotel to pick up Jarod and his things. He still had a splitting headache, even after downing the coffee and Advil, but had recovered enough to walk the few blocks from the square. Annalise threw him the keys. "You drive, I'll talk. You can drive a stick, right? Of course you can."

He looked at the keys, then looked at the car. It didn't seem like it would make it five minutes without a breakdown. "Dare I ask how far we're going in this ... vehicle?"

Annalise looked amused. "We're about three hours south of here, about ten miles outside of Roseburg. Don't worry, my nephews rebuilt the engine, so the inside does not match the outside. The electronics in newer cars give me a headache."

They got in and Jarod began to start the car, but she waved him off. "Jarod ... before we go, I want to say I'm sorry for scanning you. For hurting you. Cathy was pretty sure you were who you said you were, but I had to be one hundred percent, before going down there and letting you anywhere near her."

"It's ... okay," he said, unconvincingly. 

"No. It's not okay. You are a person who never had an ounce of privacy in your life, except in your mind. And I came along and violated the one thing that was yours and yours only. I'm sorry."

Jarod blinked at this speech, not knowing what to say. It was astonishingly strange, to be known so thoroughly by someone who he had just met, whom he did not know at all. He wondered what exactly she had seen when she was rifling through his mind.

She offered him some lunch before they left, a sort of peace offering. She had various sandwiches, some hard-boiled eggs, a bunch of strawberries, cookies, and two canisters of water. Jarod noted that everything in the basket, including the bread, was homemade. "Did you make all of this?"

"No, my aunt Marion does most of the cooking. I think Miriam had a hand in the cookies though." He took a cookie. It was buttery with some sort of spicy blueberry filling. Delicious.

"So tell me what's she like? Please."

For the first time since he met her, a genuine smile spread across Annalise's face. "She's wonderful. She likes to build stuff, wants to be an engineer. Ridiculously smart, but also very impulsive. Her intelligence is such that it fools you into thinking she's older than she really is, and then she'll go off and do something half-cocked and remind you, 'Oh right, she's _twelve_ '. Do you play chess?"

"I was trained on it when I was young, but it's been awhile."

"Oh good, the brat hasn't lost to anyone in person since she was five. Maybe you can give her a challenge. We'd better get going, it's a long drive. Just head south on I-5." 

They drove out of town, to a long, straight stretch of Interstate 5 that ribboned right down the middle of the Willamette Valley. Annalise broke the silence. "I suppose I should start the story at the beginning. Everything must be kind of a jumble for you. I know Joan and Cathy didn't give you much information."

"I would like that. Your aunt Joan is very ... interesting."

"If by 'interesting' you mean crotchety old bat, then I agree. By the way, some sweepers showed up yesterday over there, looking for you. We always knew they were monitoring us, but this is the first time any of them had the balls to come to the front door. Joan told them that as long as she didn't have a son she didn't know any Jarod either, and slammed the door in their faces."

"Blond or brunette?"

"The chick in charge? Blond she said."

Brigitte. Which meant that the Centre was keeping critical information from Miss Parker, again. Likely they didn't want her to know about Angelo's family, especially after her recent ambivalence in Atlanta. Jarod decided to change the subject. "How exactly does the telepathy work? Can everyone in your family do it?"

"Well, to start with, we're contact telepaths. At least that's what we call ourselves. That means in order to detect or send actual thoughts we have to have physical skin-to-skin contact."

"Ah, that explains the handshakes."

"The hands work the best because there's such a high density of sensory and fine motor nerves in them. But in a pinch other body parts will do, just a lot less information can be transmitted. Without any physical contact, from a distance, all we get is vague emotional awareness. It's very Deanna Troi: 'I'm sensing you're feeling ... sad'."

"Deanna ... Troi?"

"Seriously, two years out and you've never watched Star Trek?"

"I've heard of it."

"Anyway, there's also a lot a variation between us. Just about everyone can read when a sender is transmitting, and we all seem to have built-in bullshit detectors. But not everyone can send or read a non-telepath or do a scan. My theory is that there are multiple genes involved, three I think, and you have to get at least one copy of all three to be a sender. If you have more than one copy of any of the three, then you'll be a stronger sender. There's also some sort of maternal imprinting going on, maybe in the brain in utero. Everything else being equal, you'll be a stronger sender if your mother is than if your father is. My maternal grandparents were first cousins and both senders, so all four of their daughters were also senders, and all the grandchildren as well. I did a huge family pedigree and worked it out when I was a teenager."

"If everything is through the mothers, how is it you're all named Wallace?"

Annalise laughed at that one. "What can I say, it's rural Pennsylvania. There's a whole lot of cousin marrying going on. We've been there since the late 18th century, so odds are practically everyone you meet is at least a third cousin or something. There's an attraction as well, between two senders or at least a sender and a reader. You can imagine the feedback, when you can feel exactly what the other person is feeling while you're touching them."

Jarod filed that tidbit away for future analysis. "What exactly do you mean by 'reader'?"

"It's basically what it sounds like, someone who can detect thoughts when transmitted by a sender. They're not true telepaths because the sender is doing all the work. But with practice with a given sender, a reader can do it automatically, unconsciously. Their minds don't resist like they're being scanned. It's uncommon but not super rare in the general population, maybe ten percent or so are readers. My boyfriend in college was a reader, and not a cousin so far as I know."

"Jason. Did you ever see him again ... after?"

Annalise was quiet for a moment before responding. "No. When I escaped I was not in good shape, psychologically speaking. The first thing I wanted to do was go to him. But what was I going to do, ask him to go into hiding with me and raise another man's child? It would have been terribly selfish and reckless to involve him. So I went to my family instead. Later I had a cousin deliver him a letter explaining what happened, that I was still alive but couldn't see him again. It was probably the saddest Dear John letter ever written."

"If the Centre hadn't interfered, do you think you would have married him?"

"Oh yes."

Jarod let that sink in for a moment, then decided to ask what he really wanted to ask for the entire car ride. "Can you tell me what happened to you at the Centre? If you're feeling up to it, you don't have to."

"It's all right. It's a long story, but we've got a few more hours of driving to go. It's kind of refreshing to be able to talk to someone about it. Weird, but refreshing, you know?" 

Jarod did know. He wasn't sure when the last time he'd had a long, frank conversation about matters related to the Centre. Maybe with Sister Harriet. Maybe never. He had phone conversations with Miss Parker and Sydney, but they tended to be short and emotionally scathing.

"They took me in the first half of my junior year. I was studying neuroscience at the time, trying to understand how our telepathic abilities were even possible. Of course the state of knowledge about the brain at that time was pretty primitive, and still is, so I wasn't getting very far. Finally I told one of my professors, and did a little demo to convince him that is was real. It was either through him, or someone he told, that the Centre found out of about me. Or maybe they had been keeping tabs on all of us for awhile, I've never been sure. I knew what had happened to my cousin Tim of course, but somehow thought I was immune to being targeted. Maybe it's because Catherine Parker told us they were kidnapping children, I thought I was beyond the age to be of interest to them.

"They came in the middle of the night. I guess they gassed the room because I don't remember a thing, and my roommate told my parents she slept through it all as well. They packed a suitcase and left that fake diary to throw off the police. Jason knew it was utter bullshit of course, but what's he going to say? That he knows his girlfriend didn't run away because he can read her mind, and oh, by the way, there's a malevolent corporation out there that would love their very own telepath? When I woke up I was in a lab at Donoterase..."

Jarod frowned. " _Where_? That doesn't sound like a sublevel."

"It's not. It's a separate facility from the main Centre building. I never was able to find out exactly where it is. The people who worked there didn't seem to know where it was either, but they were all pretty clear is was not the Blue Cove location."

"How could they work in a building and not know where it is?"

"Unclear. It's not like they let me read the employee handbook. But I think they were locked in there for one week intervals. There was a very distinct shift change every week, there seemed to be two whole staffs that alternated weeks. 

"That's strange even by Centre standards. Usually they just force everyone to work 14 hours a day, every day, then let you go home exhausted. Except me, of course."

"Yeah. Jarod ... there's something else. You are not going to like it."

"What?"

"There had been some other major project there, one that had finished up not long before they stuck me down there. I never found out what it was about, but they had at least two kids living there. One was a toddler and sick, and _screamed_ night and day, mentally and physically. Later they put him in the room next to me, just another notch in the campaign to drive me crazy. The other one was a much younger baby, healthy, at least in his mind. I never saw him, but I could feel him sometimes, if they walked by my room with him. Babies have pretty distinct mental patterns that you can sense even from a distance."

"How do you know they were boys?"

"They knew themselves. Babies know."

"And you're sure you don't know what they were doing with them? A project name, something?"

"No, sorry. I was just focused on getting information that would help me escape. The other horror shows going on at Donoterase didn't seem relevant enough waste precious scan time on."

"I recently found another boy they were trying to turn into a Pretender. He was about nine, though, too young to be the same child."

"You'll find them all eventually." The comment was a strange reminder of the one-way intimacy she had over him. She knew he would obsess over it, and harass the Centre, until a solution was found. "In any case, they woke me up and told me they had faked my death to my family, and if I wished to actually stay in the land of the living, I had better cooperate. This is what the interviewer had been told, so he didn't think it was a lie. The patented Wallace BS detector only works when the liar knows he's lying, of course. They wanted me to do all sorts of mental tests, many related to telepathy but quite a few basic psychological ones too. I basically threw all of the tests if I could get away with it. Low balled my abilities, spike polygraphs so it looks like I'm lying on every question even when it's obviously the truth, etc."

"How do you spike a polygraph? You can consciously change your skin's galvanic resistance?"

"Sort of. I mean, what's contact telepathy but detecting and altering electrical signals from another person? A polygraph is crude toy compared with a mind, you just give it a little push and the needle goes crazy. They did a lot of EEGs as well, those were even easier to fry. As all this testing was going on, I started to scan people if I could get my hands on them. I wanted to know what happened to my cousin, and I wanted to escape. Those two things were all I began to care about. In retrospect it probably would have been better to cooperate, gain some measure of trust, that would have ultimately made it easier to escape, but by that point I was beginning to feel like a trapped animal and was desperate to get out. At one point I dropped Raines ..."

"You scanned _Raines_?"

"Ah yes, you know him. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, I'm sure you'll agree. He was the one who knew what happened to Tim, of course."

"What ... what did you see in there? You didn't happen to see anything about my parents, did you?"

"No, I'm sorry. A scan is not like downloading files off a computer; you don't see everything in the person's mind. What you get out is related to the stimulus put in. The neurons related to a given memory or piece of information have to fire in order to 'see' anything in the scan. If we had him tied up in a chair, and the ability to give specific prompts while I'm doing the scan, I could probably extract that information for you."

"That's ... both useful and disturbing. What happened after that? I can't imagine Raines took being assaulted by a test subject particularly well."

"I hardly saw Raines again, so I'd guess not. He had his underlings do most of the dirty work anyway. The situation really began to spiral downhill after that. I was scanning everyone who came into my room, even these poor low level technicians who knew nothing. They responded by restraining me most of the time, and trying to dampen my abilities. They ran a lot of electrical fields around my room, microwaves, that sort of thing."

"Microwaves?The cooking appliance?"

"It's not what you're thinking. A microwave oven puts out a lot of electromagnetic radiation, especially those early ones with crappy shielding from the eighties. It feels like someone screaming at 160 decibels in your head." She paused, pondering. "That's one big difference between Miriam's abilities and mine. Electronics don't bother her. She can sense electrical fields and even play with them, but they don't overwhelm her or intrude on her consciousness the way they do mine. Sometimes raw power has its disadvantages."

"Is that why your family likes to live outside of town?" He wondered about Angelo, living most of his life in an underground building filled with artificial lighting, data storage computers, cameras.

"Partially, yes. Although I did survive two years in Pittsburgh, so it can be done. Anyway, to continue with the story: After two or three months they decided to stop struggling with the telepathic adult, and just work on a brand new malleable kid instead. That does seem to be a Centre specialty. So they began giving me daily injections, and eventually knocked me out and took me to this fertility clinic in Atlanta ..."

"NuGenesis. I was just working there three weeks ago."

" _W_ _orking_ there? As a practicing physician, with real patients?"

"What? They made me head of inseminology."

"You know Jarod, given current circumstances, that's all manner of fucked up." They both began to laugh; it was getting to be a long car ride. "At NuGenesis the doctor in charge of my case was this cheerfully evil bitch of a woman ..."

"DeWitt," he said with a touch of loathing. If anyone deserved her comeuppance ...

"DeWitt. She was quite pissed at having to deal with me at her respectable clinic. They kept me sedated most of the time, but I did catch her arguing with Raines about how if they had picked me up a year earlier, they could have done me with the others at Donoterase. Presumably she was referring to the poor mothers of those little boys. They ended up keeping me down a side corridor away from the patient rooms, restrained, for a few days. They finished up the ovarian stimulation, used ICSI on the eggs, implanted some embryos, and shipped me backed to Donoterase post haste. I got these details from a terrified lab tech they sent in to feed me the last day. He had no idea who I was or who the donor was."

"ICSI, huh? Because their sperm supply was limited? I know _I_ wasn't volunteering any."

"That's the impression I got. The technician was disturbed by the number of embryos they implanted. Six. Obviously only one took, so maybe the embryo quality sucked. It makes me sick to think that after I escaped, they might have just defrosted a bunch more and used a surrogate. That there might be more little Miriams being raised in some fucking basement somewhere, unloved."

Jarod kept silent with a look of pain and barely suppressed fury gracing his face. Annalise didn't need telepathy to tell what he was thinking: _I will find this Donoterase_ _._

"So a few months went by. I knew I was pregnant of course; I could feel her mind tentatively reaching out to touch mine. But meanwhile they apparently no longer cared about my sanity, or maybe even thought it was a hindrance. They kept me in straightjacket a lot of the time, sometimes in complete darkness for days on end, sometimes with bright lights, electromagnetic fields blaring at me, the kid next door endlessly shrieking, sleep deprivation, all the usual things you can do to someone to break them without physically harming them. I used to just talk to her, in my mind for days, or sing to the little boys down the hall.

"I lost all sense of time, but at some point I developed a urinary tract infection. There was a bit of a panic because it was in the middle of their weekly shift and no one was supposed to leave. They dickered around a couple of days, by which point I _really_ had a serious infection, high fever, crippling abdominal pain. So finally they did an emergency trip to NuGenesis to get antibiotics and check on both the baby and my kidneys. I found out later that it was Memorial Day weekend, and DeWitt was apparently on vacation and didn't feel like coming back, so she concocted some ridiculous story about me being a charity case from the local women's prison and assigned the junior-most doctor to take care of me.

"Even though he had been cowed by DeWitt, he knew something was wrong. I _begged_ him, not with telepathy but with words, to just untie me, that I was being held prisoner against my will, that all he had to do was untie me and look the other way. At some point he patted my hand to comfort me, and instead of scanning him I transmitted everything, the kidnapping, the forced pregnancy, the sensory deprivation, so he understood. Fortunately he was a reader and didn't pass out. And he did untie me, and gave me his car keys and his wallet, and then I dropped him to make it look like he hadn't helped me escape.

"That's about it. After I got back to my family, a decision was made to buy some land in a hidden location, both to have a safe place for me and the baby, but also to be available to send other children who were powerful enough that Centre might show an interest. We felt it was likely the whole family was being monitored, and that Pennsylvania was no longer safe for at least some of the kids. And that's how we ended up in Oregon with Wallace West."


	5. Wallace West

They had sat in silence for a few minutes when Annalise motioned for Jarod to get off the highway. "Head west from here about seven miles." They had passed out of the valley into a hillier part of Oregon that was warmer, drier, subtly more Mediterrean. Stands of oak alternated with the occasional small farm or vineyard, with dense stands of timber in the mountains in the distance.

"There's one thing you left out of your story: How did you get my name?"

"Just a short time before I escaped they sent in yet another lab tech, but this one had been told rumors of my project. He had previously been assigned to the Centre's main building and had at least heard of you and the Pretender project, unofficially. He knew that you had lived at the Centre since you were a child, and was under the impression that you were some kind of human supercomputer. It was strange, really; they had been so careful for months to only send in people that were utterly ignorant, and had established a pretty good system to prevent me from scanning anyone as well. But this guy just didn't seem to know what he was supposed to do."

Jarod frowned. "Is it possible that they sent him in deliberately to give you my name?" She could sense his doubt growing. Maybe he _wasn't_ the father.

"Sure it's possible, but what for? It's not like they were ever going to let me leave. Look, I'm not trying to entrap you here. You can do all the paternity testing you want. We all want to know the truth." 

He nodded. "The truth would be ... novel. I have to say I'm surprised at how open you've been." 

Annalise smiled at that. "Well in my family you're either in the group or not, and if you're in then you get to know everything. No point in trying to keep secrets among a bunch of truth-sniffing telepaths. You were out when you were at Joan's, and now you're in. And _I_ have to say that you are not what I pictured for the last 12 years. Oh, turn right up here"

"What did you expect?

"I don't know, a pasty-faced nerd? Someone ..." she looked him up and down "...weaker."

_Broots, she thought I_ _'d_ _look like_ _Broots._ Somehow the idea amused him.

"We're coming up on the turn now, just turn left down that gravel road."

They drove past white fencing enclosing a series of young orchards, with many chickens milling about under the trees. The house was a lovely two-story farmhouse with a wrap-around porch, with an old man sitting mummified in a rocking chair, blankets wrapped around him, watching the road. Annalise suddenly felt Jarod getting nervous, although he was doing his best to hide it. "Don't worry, she doesn't bite. At least not since she was three."

They pulled up, and four figures emerged from the house. There was a middle-aged couple, the girl in a long skirt, and a little boy about four with bright curly blond hair. The two kids came running full blast up to the car. Jarod took a breath and got out. He and Miriam glanced at each other for second, nervous and excited, then looked as if they were about to run up and hug each other. Then they both changed their minds at the last second and opted for the more formal handshake. It was one of the most adorable things the other adults had ever witnessed.

"Hi, I'm Miriam," the girl said a little shyly.

"I know." 

The minute Jarod laid eyes on her, he was 95 percent certain she was in fact his daughter. She looked remarkably like a long haired, lighter-eyed version of himself -- not as he appeared today but the softer, rounder face of his younger self that he'd seen so many times on the DSAs. 

The little boy came rushing up, practically jumping he was so excited. "Are you Jarod? Are you Jarod? I'm Jack!" And he too stuck out of hand. Jarod smiled at him and shook his hand, bracing himself just a tiny bit in case the boy scanned him. He starting to learn, handshakes were a little dangerous around these people. "Nice to meet you too, Jack."

Annalise intervened at this point and began making introductions. "This is Marion and Vern, my aunt and uncle. Marion is Joan's sister, and my mother's too. On the porch over there is Vern's brother Francis. And this is Jack, my cousin Stacey's son. That's it, we have small crew at the moment since Vern and Marion's boys have grown up and left. Miriam, can you show Jarod to the guest room and give him a tour? Show him the treehouse and everything." 

As they headed to the house, Jarod noticed that Annalise slightly touched both Miriam and Marion's hands. Perhaps giving them updates on everything that had occurred that afternoon? He wondered how much information could be transmitted in such a short period of time. Was it actual words in the mind, or did they transmit a whole sensory experience? Perhaps he could ask Miriam when he got to know her a little bit better.

They went inside -- with the man on the porch ignoring them, continuing to stare at the road -- and Jarod had to take a few seconds to absorb the atmosphere of the house. The ground floor had an open floor plan, with a central kitchen and a large communal room that functioned both as a dining and living room. Every available wall, except for those with windows, was covered with bookshelves, the books sometimes piled two deep. On top of the bookcases and among the shelves were many family photographs, knickknacks and small wooden carvings or perhaps puzzles. The room had a large built-in brick wood stove, a heating type, and the kitchen also had a smaller wood-burning oven against a different wall that Jarod guessed was primarily for cooking. Unlike every other American home Jarod had been in, there were no electrical appliances visible in the kitchen -- not even a fridge -- no television, no stereo, no computers. The house had universal hardwood floors, with the occasional throw rug, and many oil lamps scattered about on tables or the top of bookshelves. There were electrical outlets and lights, so he guessed the house was in fact connected to the grid; they just chose not to avail themselves of it. The total effect of wood and books everywhere made the house look both cluttered and comforting. It was a home.

"You have a lot of books."

"They're mostly Mom's, but occasionally she lets the rest of us read them. I bet she got more at Powell's while she was in Portland." 

Annalise gave her daughter a mock frown. "Insolent child, we may have to reinstate the beatings. Why don't you show Jarod upstairs so he can put his stuff down?"

Jack ran ahead and insisted on showing off his room first. "See, I have a bunk bed and the solar system and glowing stars on the _ceiling_ and that race car was left by my cousin Melvin and my Thomas books are _so_ cool and here's a dinosaur lamp and --" Miriam touched him and he abruptly broke off. "Do you want to see Miriam's room too? She has cool robots."

Jarod had to smile. "I would love to see some 'cool' robots."

Miriam's room was the next one down the hall. She had a stuffed bookcase as well, filled with many chess books and heavy tomes of college-level physics and engineering, and stacks of library books piled up around it on the floor. A dominant feature of the room was an enormous number of mechanical models, some made from Erector set pieces, some from scrounged materials. Some looked functional, or at least mock-ups of something functional, while others appeared to be mainly artistic. Jack immediately sat down and began to command a robot army battle in the corner.

The thing about her room that drew Jarod's attention the most, however, were the drawings she had taped over most of the walls. He put the DSA case and his duffel bag down for a moment and went over to look at them. Most were small pencil drawings of either optical illusions or surrealist imagery. A large poster-sized one in the middle, however, showed a giant Dali-esque floating cityscape, with many impossible architectural features worked in. The northeast quadrant of the suspended island appeared to have been hit by an asteroid and and bits of buildings were drifting away. 

"Did you draw these?"

"Most of the little ones I copied from a book of MC Escher drawings from the library. I was trying to figure out how he constructed his illusions, the mathematical proportions, perspective, tessellations, that sort of thing. Plus I think they just look cool. The island city poster I've been working on for awhile. That's the fifth version and it still doesn't look like it does in my head." She sat down her bed and crossed her legs, letting the long peasant skirt float out around her. "Is it OK if I ask you some questions?" At his nod, she pointed to his things on the floor. "What's in the case?"

Jarod burst out laughing. You meet your dad for the first time and _that's_ the first question you ask? "It's a computer of sorts, that has a visual record of all the simulations I did at the Centre over the years."

"What's a simulation?"

He sat down next to her on the bed and considered how to answer that. "In order to solve certain complex problems, they would have me recreate scenarios and 'become' the people in those scenarios. I could then describe how people likely would have behaved under those circumstances, or make predictions based on those actions, or create strategies for the scenario to play out in a certain way. The end goal of the sims wasn't always the same."

She frowned, as if she didn't quite buy the concept. "So ... like a computer model?"

"No, nothing like a computer model." He paused, thinking it over some more. "In the car on the way down here, your mom told me that scanning someone's mind is not like downloading files off a computer. I think she meant that you have to work with the other person's mind as you find it, that it's a synergistic, not mechanical, process. In the same way, a sim is not done with deductive logic. In a model every result inevitably derives from the initial conditions. You can never really get out any more information than you put in. But a good Pretender _can_ get more information, by intuiting what the human response to the situation will be. We don't just analyze the situation, we interact with it, and get solutions that cannot be perceived by a computer."

He could tell she was still dubious, so he looked around the room for something that would help her grasp it. "You play chess, right? Do you ever play against a computer program?" She nodded. "Can you beat the computer?"

"Sure. The newer programs are getting pretty good, but I still usually win."

" _How_ do you win? The computer can calculate millions of moves by brute force, far more than any human can in the time frame for playing a game. So what can you do that the computer cannot?"

"When I was younger I would decide in advance on a strategy and tried to consciously think as many moves ahead as possible. That worked pretty well against people who are not very good at chess, but not with experienced players or computer programs. Now I've studied so many games that I can just look at the whole board, all at once, and see how the game has already been played and how it will probably go. It's like a river where the opposing player's moves create branches or eddies, but you can still see the whole flow." She glanced at him with her intelligent light brown eyes, and twirled her hair. She didn't want to insult him, but her skepticism radiated out. "I see where you're going with this, but I still don't see how it applies to real life. In chess there are rules that constrain what moves you can make, and there are only three possible outcomes. In life there must be a million possible outcomes, flowing from a million decisions. How can you know, when you're doing a simulation, that you've picked the correct branch of the river?"

"Well, just like you've studied classic chess games to learn all the hidden patterns, I had to study many different aspects of human life: many professions, bodies of knowledge, the many things humans are capable of doing to each other, many emotions. For years that's all they let me do, study scenarios from every possible angle. But in the end I could become anyone in any of those situations, and new ones too. It's intuition, based on all the patterns learned from all of the other situations."

"What if you had to become a bad person, if the simulation involved evil acts? Mom said you were a good person, do you lose yourself and become evil too?"

"You don't lose your own personality, not really. Sydney worked very hard on that point, to try to keep my sense of identity intact even though the Centre would have preferred to obliterate it. He felt that a Pretender could never accurately perform a sim without a strong sense of self to anchor it. My brother ..." He turned away from her for a split second, in a flash of grief. "He didn't have such a conscientious caretaker. Most of his personality, his sanity really, was destroyed as a result." Jarod wondered how much Annalise had told her about the inner workings of the Centre. "Did your mom show you what she saw in my mind?"

"No, she said you'd had your privacy invaded enough for one day."

_True enough_ , thought Jarod. "Maybe we can take a break from this and you can show me around the farm? Did I hear something about a treehouse?"

"Can I ask one more question first?"

"OK."

"How come you didn't leave the Centre earlier?"

_Oh, child, that's the most complicated question of them all._ How to even begin to describe the level of psychological manipulation he had operated under for three decades? "There were many reasons, but two big ones. One was that they told me that I was helping people, helping the world, with my simulations. In reality they were perverting them for their own purposes. The other reason is that they had me convinced of my own impotence out in the real world. I was supposed to be a fragile flower that required shelter at all times, lest my psyche break off and blow away. That's one thing you will never have a problem with, Miriam. Trust me when I say you can do anything you want to do."

 

******

 

They finally stashed his stuff in the guest bedroom and began walking around the farm, Jack in tow excitedly providing commentary on all of his favorite places. They had about five acres in various fruit and nut trees, broken up into paddocks for rotation between chicken flocks. One of Miriam's chores was to take care of the chickens -- feeding, watering, locking up the coops at night for predator prevention, egg collection, flock rotation, cleaning out the coops. She showed Jarod several ingenious devices to save labor of some of these tasks, all without electricity. The farm also had several acres in blueberries, a larger parcel devoted to commodity crops like wheat and hay, and about an acre in specialty vegetables that Annalise grew for various restaurants in the area. The north side of the property, behind but within eyesight of the house, was quite hilly and forested, preventing most traditional forms of agriculture without significant modification of the landscape. The forest consisted of dense stands of brush and Oregon white oak, with some huge old Douglas firs near the top that had somehow survived the area's pervasive logging. It was at a lookout the top of one of these hills, at the base of a massive old 200 foot Doug fir, that Miriam had built the treehouse.

Jarod had been expecting a child's playground or fort when he heard the word "treehouse," so he was quite surprised to find that it actually was a small house, solidly built on a platform slightly raised off the ground and directly adjacent to the tree trunk. The cabin had large south-facing windows, which served for both lighting and winter heating, and gave a partial view of the valley around the farm. While the window side looked like a traditional A-frame house, the back of the it seemed to be somehow integrated into the truck, as if the house were an outgrowth of the tree itself. Many silvery-white fibers ran from the treehouse up the tree, further emphasizing the umbilical look.

"Wow, did you build all of this yourself?"

"Wellllll, my cousins Brian and Paul did a lot of the heavy lifting. They're Marion and Vern's sons, they used to live here when I was younger. We built it when Paul was home on summer break. I designed everything though."

"How old were you?"

"Nine mostly. I did some of the electrical when I was ten."

" _Electrical?_ Your mom must love that."

"That's what makes the treehouse so awesome. It's all mine."

They climbed some stairs and entered the treehouse near the front windows. On the inside there were actually two adjoining rooms. The front room, with the view, was a game room with many comfortable chairs and futon, and a small table with a beautiful carved wood chess set. The back room had a desk with some lovely homemade lamps and a large Jerry-rigged computer.

"How are you getting electricity up here? Did you run a line all the way from the house? Or maybe a wind turbine somewhere up there?"

"Nope. I use piezoelectricity from the tree, stored in some batteries in that closet over there. That's why there are wires running up the tree."

" _Piezoele_ _c_ _tricity_? You're getting electricity from the movement of the branches in the tree? I'm surprised you can generate enough charge to run a computer. Or even get that tiny voltage down here."

"Well the whole wire is generating a charge, not just a crystal at the top. And I've got about a thousand wires going up the trunk, which branch off at the top to go down some smaller side branches that really whip around. And I'm not here all the time, so there's time for the batteries to charge up."

"I can't believe Annalise let you climb up this tree. It must be nearly 200 feet high."

"204 feet, I calculated it from the shadows cast on the ground. Although the wiring only goes up to about 120 feet. We had a professional tree climber come out and put in permanent rigging. He was this grizzly old logger who taught us how to safely belay and rappel and rope branches and everything; it was a ton of fun. In terms of actually setting everything up..." She broke off, thinking back. "I had trouble figuring out how to attach the wires so they wouldn't fall off the tree and wouldn't impede the amperage. And obviously the piezoelectric material has limited flexibility, so there are these small gaps in between the ceramic beads that kept breaking. And rain was kind of a problem too. Yeah. It was a lot of work."

For the first time Jarod looked suitably impressed.

"Doesn't all this wiring bother your, uh, telepathic sense?"

"Not really. I can sort of sense it from afar, which makes the tree feel especially alive. I feel like I know her, like she's this ancient wise grandma who patiently watches over me, this strange little ant who has dressed her in strange clothes." A faint metal bell clanged in the distance. "Oh, dinner's ready. Come on guys, we've got to go. I hope you like lasagna."


	6. The Theory of Timmy

They walked back to the house in the rapidly cooling evening. "I don't think I've ever had lasagna. It's pasta that's been boiled _and_ baked?"

"Baked with cheesy goodness," said Miriam. "Also a good way to hide zucchini, which we will be eating for the next three months."

Jack ran in front of them. "Jarod! Knock-knock! Knock-knock, Jarod!" Jarod smiled at him but didn't know the game.

"So, do you only eat what seasonally available on the farm? What do you eat in the winter?"

"Knock-knock Jarod, knock-knock!"

Miriam lightly touched his hand, and suddenly words popped into his head --

_You're supposed to say 'Who's there?'_

It sounded exactly like her. There was no actual sound of course, his mind just automatically interpreted it as her voice. There was an implied directionality to the thought, as if she were mentally pointing at Jack. 

Ever one to roll with the punches, Jarod looked straight at the boy and said, "Who's there?"

Jack giggled. "Cash!"

_Cash who?_

"Cash who?"

"No, I'd like some peanuts please!" And he broke into hysterical laughter at the terrible joke. Jarod and Miriam had to laugh too.

They were approaching the farmhouse, and Annalise was watching them from the porch. She was frowning. "Miriam, are you mindtalking with Jarod?"

"What? You said he was a reader."

"That's not an open invitation, honey. You have to ask first. Jarod's brain might have had enough for one day."

"Oh." She glanced guiltily at him. "I'm sorry. I hope I didn't hurt you."

"It's okay, you didn't hurt me," he said quietly. Annalise looked between the two of them and shrugged slightly, as if to say, _It's your head._

They went inside to sit down to dinner. The house smelled delicious to Jarod, like warm bread and garlic and -- he had to admit -- cheesy goodness. It was also blastingly hot from the wood burning oven, so all the windows had been opened. Vern's brother Francis was now sitting at the table, a lighter blanket wrapped around him, still catatonic. 

Jarod sat down next to Vern at the table, and Miriam took the seat on his other side. "Can I ask you what happened to your brother? Did he have a stroke?"

"No. He's one of the silent ones. Sometimes in the family a child is born with telepathic ability, but for whatever reason their brain is unable to deal with it, so they withdraw inward. I guess today people would call it a type of autism. It's the responsibility of the senders to take care of the silent ones."

"Can you talk to him, in his mind?"

"He doesn't have any language abilities, so mindtalking is deeply distressing to him. I just do light passive scans, to make sure he isn't cold or in pain or whatnot. Here's, let's do grace so we can eat." 

They all joined hands in a circle around the table. Jarod expected a prayer or benediction of some sort to be said. He had seen Sister Harriet say the Catholic grace, and a more free-form Protestant blessing in someone's home once. Here, though, they all sat silently for about half a minute, eyes mostly closed. At some invisible signal they all let go and began chatting and passing the food around. Seeing Jarod's quizzical expression, Vern leaned over. "In the Quaker tradition, prayer is often done silently. Each person gives their own blessing, according to however they understand the Spirit." 

"Or, if you're like me and don't believe in God or Spirit, just give thanks to the impersonal universe that the seasons still worked, food still grew, and you're still here to enjoy it," added Annalise from across the table. "Works either way."

"So, Jarod," said Marion. "I know you've probably had your fill of talking today, but my sister will call up here and chew me out if I don't get some details of what's happened to my nephew Tim."

Jarod nodded. "You mean, what exactly is wrong with him? I've never been sure. He has speech and fine motor difficulties, and often strange reactions to people and things, although that may just be a side effect of his empathic abilities. If I had to guess I'd say at least Broca's and some adjacent areas were destroyed. I don't know how the empathic powers fits into things, though. The experiment that did the damage involved electrostimulation, so they could have both injured some areas and created new connections between areas not normally wired together."

"What exactly are his 'empathic abilities'?" Annalise asked. "I know you told Joan he could get reads off objects, and that's what Raines believed as well, but it just seems flat-out impossible. I've always thought we were reading electrical signals; how could you do that off a pencil or a book?"

"I've seen him do it. It's quite amazing. If he holds an object that was involved in an highly emotionally charged situation, he clearly feels what they felt. He can also absorb the personalities of people based on their personal objects, but maybe that one is a combination of both his empathic and Pretender abilities."

Marion and Vern both looked at Annalise. "Yeah ... I didn't tell Jarod my Theory of Timmy yet."

"Theory of Timmy?"

"I don't think he was ever a Pretender, or genius, or whatever they thought he was when they picked him up. I think he was an otherwise normal little boy who used his telepathic abilities to cheat on some tests, and that got him into very big trouble."

Jarod's opinion of this theory was written all over his incredulous face. "I have him on film solving some very advanced problems."

Annalise's eyebrows shot up at that. "After dinner, let's see it. Look, this is based on what I saw in Raines' mind. One thing was very clear: He was deeply disappointed in Tim's performance as a Pretender. That's the reason he did the electrostimulation in the first place. He might have had to release him if he didn't start to get positive results."

"I think it would have been obvious from the beginning if he had been faking it."

She spoke very softly. "It might have been obvious if Sydney had been the one to get him. But he didn't. And you know that Raines always liked the power of molding a child as he saw fit. Do you think he would a little thing like raw ability stand in his way, once he had a boy to play with?"

He had to agree, reluctantly. "Sydney would have seen his abilities. Unlike Raines he saw things as they actually are, not as he wished them to be. Also he's always had an interest in the paranormal. But it isn't just cognitive ability they were looking for. There's some sort of factor in our blood that's associated with being a Pretender. They screened for it."

"Factor?"

"A protein of some kind. In the red files it was labeled ptd26. I have no idea what it does but we all had varying amounts of it. Timmy had one of the highest levels of all. I would guess that what's they were looking for in Davy's blood."

"Who's Davy?"

_Let him be a boy_ , thought Jarod. He decided to come clean and described his recent stint at NuGenesis, Davy's kidnapping, and Angelo's failed serotonin treatments. The others looked fascinated, Annalise a little disquieted. Miriam had been keeping Jack entertained with mindtalking knock-knock jokes, but was keeping tabs on the entire exchange. Vern continued to slowly feeding Francis by hand.

When he was done, Annalise spoke first. "Sorry, I'm just trying to absorb it all. You gave my cousin an experimental treatment -- even though you don't really know what's wrong with him -- and he got better for awhile, escaped the Centre, missed his last dose, regressed and got recaptured?"

"That sums it up, yes. The last dose contained a second chemical that was supposed to reinforce the new axonal connections, setting them permanently. Without it they decayed back the old configuration."

Marion spoke up. "Why did the Centre want him back? Why have they been keeping him around all these years?"

"They think he's their property. They need no other reason."

"Why didn't Catherine Parker meet us when she said she would?"

Jarod paused at that question. "I'm ... not sure of everything that happened around Catherine Parker's death. But she had already removed several children from the Centre at that point, including some of the other ones in the Pretender program. Raines did his experiment right before she was planning on rescuing him, so he may have caught onto her plan. She apparently decided not to take him after he was injured. Perhaps she thought he would get better medical treatment at the Centre."

"Well that's a goddamned shame, we might have been able to help him had she bothered to go through with it."

"Annalise!" Marion was appalled.

"I'm sorry but it's true. Almost thirty years of heartbreak, and for what?"

Jarod quietly broke in. "What do you mean, you might have been able to help him?"

"It's sort of a collective effort, but we can sometimes repair damage to the brain, physiological or psychological. It's going to be a lot more difficult than it would have been right after the injury, though."

"Going to be?"

"Yes, Jarod. I think it's pretty obvious you are going to have to spring my cousin sooner or later. We can't let him rot there for the rest of his life as _Angelo_."

 

******

 

After dinner and a dessert of more of the tasty blueberry cookies, Jarod brought his laptop downstairs to show them Timmy's film. The computer seemed to him bizarrely incongruous with the pseudo-nineteenth century surroundings. The kids looked frankly envious of this bit of advanced technology, and Jarod wondered if Annalise would object if he bought Miriam one for the treehouse. Probably.

He loaded up the video, and everyone leaned in to watch the long-lost little boy doing an array of IQ-related tests. Marion looked a little heart broken. "It's hard to believe he's still alive after all this time," she murmured.

"Hey, is that McKay?"

Marion squinted at the background. "Yes, I think it's McKay. The elementary school down the road from Joan and Roger's."

At the beginning of the film, the unseen interviewer administered the old WISC intelligence test, with its various verbal, memory and symbolic reasoning subtests. Timmy's performance was above average but nothing spectacular when averaged together. On certain subtests he seemed to be guessing, others he answered so quickly he racked up a high score. Then they got to the more obscure tests, including the equation cubes. Timmy performed that test very slowly, rolling each cube over and over while staring at the interviewer, but eventually ended up with the correct formula on every problem. Annalise and Marion looked at each other.

"Yeah, Jarod, he's totally cheating on that one. He's not even looking at the cubes."

"But he's not touching the interviewer. I thought you needed physical contact to get specific information."

"He doesn't need to read the specific answer. All he has to do is get a general sense of approval or disapproval from the interviewer, and fish around for the correct answer. Every time he rolls the cube to the correct side, the interviewer's thought process will subconsciously change to approval. Go back to that IQ stuff at the beginning." He rewound a bit. "See, on these verbal tests it's not really possible to cheat, because they are asking for free-form speech. There isn't any one correct answer that the interviewer knows. Likewise on this digit span test it would be tough to do without touching the tester. But on this matrix test it's multiple choice, and he kills it."

"Hmmmm."

"Clearly we need a demonstration. Hey Jack!" She dug a notebook and pen out of a kitchen drawer, and wrote on it an algebraic formula that could easily be solved with the quadratic equation. "What do you think 'X' is?"

Jack looked at her blankly. "Um, is that a 'C'?" He was just starting to learn to read.

"No sweetie, in math that's called a parenthesis. Now here." She wrote ten possible answers on the sheet and handed it to Jarod. Only one was correct. "OK, so _listen really hard_ to Jarod and try to guess what the correct answer is."

Jack didn't even glance at the sheet. He just stared with unfocused blue eyes at Jarod, who tried to keep his mind as blank as possible as he went gestured through all the possible answers. At the eighth, the correct one, Jack narrowed his eyes briefly and then jumped up and clapped. "THAT ONE!" Miriam gave him a high five. 

Annalise grinned. "A genius I tell you." Jarod dropped the paper in defeat.

"On that note, I think I'm going to bed if you all don't mind." _And ta_ _k_ _ing_ _a break from telepaths_.

He went upstairs and lay on the bed looking at the ceiling, intending to try and think through everything that had occurred that day. It wasn't even dark outside yet, and a warm red light filled the room from the western windows. Jarod drifted off within a minute of laying down.


	7. The River Bends

_They came in the middle of the night and took the little boy first_ _. The others fought back but they took them all except the old ones they had no use for so they shot them. They drugged them and dragged them and locked them_ _in the sim lab or a cell or a cell in the sim lab. The woman talked too much and thrashed too much and he told her to be quiet but her mind wouldn't be quiet so they stabbed her in the back of the head so she couldn't see and couldn't walk and drugged her and dragged her down to SL27 jarod you're dreaming where he never saw anyone again without them being stabbed in the head. The little boy wasn't special_ _so they killed him and released him but the girl was special so they kept her in his sim lab to replace him and told him the_ _y_ _would kill the little boy again if he didn't cooperate this time and teach_ _her how to live in a cell she doesn't know how to live in a cell they'll let lyle have her if_ _she isn't quiet_ _so he must teach her_ _JAROD_ _WAKE_ _**UP** _

He opened his eyes, gasping.

It was dark now, and only Annalise's small lantern shown from a side table. She was holding his hand, stroking it very lightly with her thumb. Someone had covered him in a light blanket, but he was still wearing his clothes. "You were having a nightmare. You couldn't wake yourself up."

"I ... I need to get up. Can you turn on a light?"

"What you need is to go back to sleep, Jarod. Six hours is not enough, you should get at least ten after yesterday. A lamp will only wake you up more."

_Ten hours_? He didn't know when he'd _ever_ slept ten hours straight. Maybe in a sensory deprivation chamber. He suddenly heard some faint voices coming from down the hallway. "They ... the kids ... they didn't see the dream did they?" 

"No, they can't see anything specific unless they touch you. They just feel that you were frightened," she said gently. "Miriam will get him back in bed, don't worry. One of us has a nightmare at least once a week and wakes everyone up. No big deal."

"The dream ... the dream will repeat if I don't get up. They wake me up, over and over again. I should just get up." A thousand horrible variations of the sim, a thousand forks in the river. 

"This is not a sim or a flashback, only a bad dream. You just have to get your mind on something else. Is it okay if I help you?"

"Oh sure, why not?" he said a touch sarcastically, slumping back onto the pillow. But he didn't pull his hand away either.

"I'll take that as a yes. Have you ever been to Hawaii, or maybe a nice warm beach in Mexico?"

"Both."

"Let's say Hawaii then. You're in Hawaii on a deserted beach and it's the most perfect day, 85 degrees, sunshine in a bright blue sky with the occasional fluffy cloud, the very lightest breeze to bring fresh air over you, the smell of salt and sea and a faint trace of sweet tropical fruit. So you decide to go for a swim. The water is warm, almost as warm as the air, and it completely surrounds you, envelops you, and you just float in it. You let the ocean bob you up and down, gently taking you along a current that you can't see but can barely feel." As she was talking, with the tiniest amount of force she began to stimulate a small portion of his anterior hypothalamus that would induce non-REM sleep. His eyelids drifted downward. She noted that his circadian rhythms were a mess too, the worst she had ever felt even by the sad standard of modern humans and their artificial light, but that was something to worry about another day. 

"You're floating along the shore, just feeling the water gently push you, listening to the seagulls, when you hear a different sound. It's some dolphins chittering around you. You look and you see just below the water's surface there's a baby dolphin that's stuck between some rocks. The parents are trying to get her free but they can't push her enough. So you pull her out of the rocks, and she swims up and takes a breath of air. And the parents are so happy and grateful that they invite you to go swimming with their pod. You float and all the dolphins come up and rub their noses at you and accept you as an honorary member of the pod, even though you are a clumsy child-human in their world. And they take off, begin to swim towards the ocean, and you swim hard to keep up. The dolphins slow down for you, and swim around you, and play games and tease you, and you laugh with them and all of you are joyous and free."

Jarod smiled slightly at the story, almost asleep. "Miriam?" he murmured.

"Yes?" She didn't correct him.

"Have you ever been to Hawaii?"

"No, I've just seen pictures."

"I would like to take you to Hawaii. It's very nice there."

"Maybe in the winter we'll all go. Go to sleep, Jarod."

"Okay."

She let go of his hand and walked back to her own room.

 

******

 

When Jarod finally woke up in the morning he still felt disoriented and exhausted. _If this is what a good night's sleep is like, it's overrated_. Perhaps the scan the previous day had taken a greater toll on him than he originally thought. He dragged himself out of bed and put on fresh clothes, then ambled downstairs to see what everyone was doing. Vern and Francis seemed to be the only ones in the house. He was helping his brother get to the porch.

"Good morning, Jarod. Everyone's outside doing chores right now. In the summer we usually try to get things done in the morning while it's still cool, then eat a big brunch around eleven."

"Is there any task I can help you out with while I'm here? I've never done any kind of farming before, although I did do a rodeo once."

Vern laughed. "Well we don't have a lot of use for riding or roping on this kind of farm, unless you're talking about riding a John Deere. You ever drive a tractor before?" Jarod shook his head, eyes shining at the prospect of learning yet another new task, one that would teach some other aspect of the human condition. "There's a lot of hay that needs cutting this time of year. Weather's supposed to be nice for the next week or so, good time to cut. I'll show you after breakfast, after the grass has some time to dry out from the morning dew. I'm sure Miriam could use some help with the chickens if you want to do something right now."

Jarod went out to the orchards and found that Miriam, indeed, could use some help. She was cleaning out many of their small mobile chicken coops and laboriously hauling wheelbarrows full of smelly straw to compost piles. She was filthy, covered with dirt and grass seed and aerosolized manure. As he approached she smiled but then glanced him up and down. "You're going to ruin those nice clothes out here. The uniform is pretty much jeans and old T-shirts."

"I can always get new ones. Why don't you let me push the wheelbarrow while you clean things out? We'll get everything done faster that way."

As they worked, Jarod tried to chat her up. "Do you ever wish you were in school?"

"As opposed to doing this all morning? I went to school once for a day when I was eight. I begged Mom to see what it was like, and she made arrangements in Sutherlin for this homeschooler tour thing. She said I'd be bored within a half an hour, and she was right. Six hours a day, and they hardly do anything. I'd rather shovel chicken poop and spend my afternoons reading books."

"But don't you get lonely here? Do you want to be around kids your own age?"

"That would be nice, I guess. I miss my cousin Brian, he just went off to college last year." Her shoulders slumped a bit and she frowned. He could tell this was a source of pent-up frustration. "It's hard to get to know kids my own age. They're not interested in the things I like, they don't know what I'm talking about and it's hard for me to care what _they're_ talking about. Why should I care about fingernail polish or some guy on TV or whatever? Monday is library day, we go up to the community college or sometimes U of O. I like to talk to college students, and I can play online with my chess friends. _They_ know what I'm talking about."

"Maybe you should go to college too. The classes are much more challenging, and there's more freedom for the students as well."

"Mom says I can go when I'm 16. She says I'll attract too much attention if I'm young, and also that a lot of the fun of it is in the social interactions, which you can't participate in very well when you're twelve."

"Hmmmm. She's afraid that you'll be captured at school, like she was at Carnegie Mellon."

"Well, she's got a point. But she also says that she wasn't very careful about hiding her abilities, which is not a mistake I plan to make. They don't know what my name is or what I look like. They can't be monitoring every college student in America."

Jarod actually thought the Centre probably _was_ doing some passive monitoring of every student at the better universities, if only for recruitment purposes, but decided not mention it. He could hide her identity well enough when the time came.

"Jarod?"

"Yes?"

"Do you really think I'm your daughter? You're not just pretending because you want a family, are you?" Her voice was very soft. 

He stopped what he was doing and held her by her very dirty shoulders. "I'm not Pretending. I hope you are my daughter, but I can't say for sure. Do you want to know?" She nodded. "Then I'll order what we need to find out."

"Okay."

"You know, before I met you, this situation was one of my worst nightmares. I couldn't imagine anything good could come of the Centre's manipulations." He'd given the matter some short but agonizing consideration when he'd found out that Raines was planning on rebooting the Pretender program. All he could think of was another child raised in tortured isolation, molded to the Centre's demented will. It never occurred to him to imagine a child free, free to be herself. "But I was wrong, because you turned out pretty well. Very well. I would be proud to be your dad."

 

******

 

After a shower and brunch -- in which he began to regale many of his adventures since escaping from the Centre -- Jarod went out with Vern to learn the time-honored skills of tractor driving and haymaking. He proved to be good at it, of course, which prompted Vern to joke that he would be promoted to junior farm hand in no time. He headed up to his room to relax, and maybe set up the phone relay so he could call Sydney safely.

Someone was already in the guest room.

She glanced up a fraction of a second before he entered, perhaps sensing him coming but not far enough in advance to hide what she was doing. Miriam was watching a DSA. It was from the seventies when he was a teenager, one of the ones about Watergate. She jumped up, looking guilty and terrified. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to invade your privacy ..."

"But you did it anyway." He walked over and switched it off, then turned to her, trying to reign in his anger.

"I wanted to know ... to know what they would do to me. If Mom hadn't gotten away."

Jarod sighed and sat down next to her on the bed. "You can ask me any questions you want. But please don't watch the tapes, OK?"  
"Why not?"

_Because I don't want you to see me as a prisoner._ "I'd just rather you didn't. I keep these to help me find clues to my past, my parents. It's also evidence against the Centre that I might need someday."

"That was a simulation?"

"Yes, I did quite a few about political matters in the seventies and early eighties. There were four about Watergate, covering it from different angles, trying to determine the motivations of the various players."

"Is that all they ever let you do?"

"Mostly yes. Sometimes quite a bit of research was necessary to perform a simulation, so they would leave me alone to read up on it. Occasionally experiments were done as well, although less of that as I got older."

"You couldn't even go _outside_?" She sounded incredulous, as if sunshine was as necessary to life as breathing. "Why couldn't you do the simulations and go outside too?"

"Because it is not just about doing the simulations correctly. It's about control, too. They could have fed me real food and let me go outside and let me have friends, let me have a life, and the results of the sims would have been just as good. But the Centre must control everything it touches. I know someone there, who might have ended up like me except for the fact that she is the daughter of one of the leaders of the Centre. So she is paid a very nice salary, and has a nice house, and is allowed to go home at the end of the day and on weekends. But they still own her. They still make her do things that, in her heart, she knows are killing her soul.

"That's what happened to your Mom, too: They couldn't get her to do what they wanted, so they decided to use her for something she couldn't control or stop. You wanted to know what they would do to you, and that's it. They control what you eat, when you sleep, what you read, who you see, what you can touch, where you go, what you wear, what you do with your body. They watch you while you do anything and everything. They try to control what's in your mind. Every minute of every day, your life would have been monitored, scrutinized, directed and manipulated, and all feelings about what they are doing to you repressed."

Miriam looked as if she were about to cry, and Jarod wondered if he had gone too far. He reached out and gently pulled her to him for a hug, and she wrapped her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. "But that's not what happened. You're free, Miriam. It might not feel that way to you because you're a kid and you're still getting ordered around a certain amount for your own good. Ultimately, though, you get to choose how to live your life. For good or bad, it's up to you."


	8. Myzsterychick

"So, I heard Miriam got into a bit of trouble today." Annalise was sitting on the rocker on the porch after dinner. It was still very light outside, in the long days of June. Jarod sat down next to her.

"I might have yelled at her a little bit."

"P'shaw, that was barely yelling, and she deserved it. You should have seen the time she decided to put experimental fluids into the tractor engine, just to see what would happen. Or the year she thought the tomato plants needed more calcium, so she dumped milk on them and killed all of them. Or when I found out she was climbing that damn tree before the rigging was up. 'But, Mom, I haven't died yet!' Now _that_ was yelling." Jarod smiled at that, but with a hint of sadness. She knew what he was thinking: _But I wasn't there for any of that_. "Don't worry Jarod, with that child I'm sure there will be many more parental opportunities to lose it. We still have the glorious teenage years to look forward to." This time he did genuinely smile. 

"Years ... I told her today that I wasn't one hundred percent sure that I was her father."

"You're pretty sure. It was written all over your face when you first saw her."

He nodded. "I didn't want to get her hopes up if we're wrong, though."

"Her hopes or yours? Do you think you can handle years, Jarod? Because being a dad, as opposed to anonymous test tube sperm donor, is not something you can walk away from. _Please_ don't find out for sure if you're just going to turn around and leave us."

"I won't," he whispered.

They sat together silently for a few moments. The situation was fraught with strange, delicate emotional baggage. Jarod decided to just embrace the awkwardness and go all in.

"Listen, Annalise, I want to ask you something. Do you think you could ... retrieve a repressed or forgotten memory?"

"God, you really are a glutton for punishment. You want me to rummage through your mind yet _again_?"

"I know what you did last night for the nightmare. I think you can do it, maybe without knocking me unconscious this time."

She waved her hand, as if it were a trifle. "Sleep's not difficult, it's a basic biological drive, you just have to know the right area to stimulate. I could make you hungry or horny just as easily."

He raised his eyebrows at that.

"The hypothalamus, baby. Gotta love it. Anyway, what you are asking for is much more complicated. Memories are just patterns on neural networks. It's very easy to accidentally create false memories by messing with the pattern. Even if you only fire off a few of the wrong cells, it can change the memory significantly. Plus with you in particular, it might be tough. Your brain is very ... suggestible."

" _Suggest_ _i_ _ble?_ I really don't think that's true."

"I don't mean that you are consciously easy to sway. What I'm talking about is more related to imagination. You see things in your mind very, very clearly, with much more detail than most people do. Like that Hawaii story I told last night, you imagined it with full sensory detail, what everything would feel like, smell like, sounds in the background. Most people would only have thought of a sketchy visual. The problem with that is a lot of the brain cannot tell the difference between a real memory and a imagined one. Input is input, as far as the processing regions go. Only the higher cortical regions put everything together and distinguish between reality, dreams, and plain old thinking. 

"So this is what I'm afraid might happen with you. Say that you're trying to remember some dim memory from when you were a young child. And then I say something like, 'Oh, look at that big purple elephant in the corner of the room.' Naturally you're going to imagine a stuffed purple elephant in the corner of your old bedroom, with really vivid detail: the worn out tail that's been chewed on, some nasty Spaghettio stains, the exact shade of mauvey violet a kid from the sixties would have, and so on."

Jarod began to laugh, because of course now he was involuntarily imagining a purple elephant, exactly as she suggested.

"And you being you, you begin to obsess over this damn elephant. What does it mean? Is it some tiny clue as to my parents location at the time of the memory? Who loved me enough to give me the humongous elephant? Et cetera. So you think about the elephant over and over again, each time with full sensory detail. And pretty soon, whatever neural pattern corresponds to 'purple elephant' has been reinforced over and over again, and just gets integrated into the original memory."

"Hmmm, I think I see the scope of the problem. Although it would help if you didn't make up highly salient images in the first place."

Now she laughed. "Exactly. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it would need to be done very carefully. Also the knocking you unconscious part ... we should do some exercises first, before digging around for anything deep. I'm pretty sure your mind will adapt, but we don't want to cause a seizure or something."

"That would be preferable."

"Okay, if you're still game, tomorrow after brunch. Try to get some real sleep tonight."

"I always _try_ to sleep." Annalise just snorted at that.

Miriam came walking up to the house, back from locking up the chickens for the evening. She waved at them. "Ah, I told her I would play chess with her tonight."

"Oh, good. If you win, be sure to gloat a lot. The kid's been insufferable about her chess prowess for years."

"That doesn't seem very sporting."

"Don't worry, you're not going to win."

 

******

 

Jarod watched from the doorway as Miriam put little Jack to bed. First she made him brush his teeth, then read him a charming word-play book about green eggs and ham, then sang him some soft songs Jarod had never heard before. Finally she kissed him goodnight, opened a window to let in some cool air, and closed most of the curtains. It was still light outside. Then they went downstairs to the living room to play chess. They sat on a soft area rug on the floor, opposite one another, and Miriam set up the board. She took black.

"Miriam? How come Jack lives with you, without his parents?"

"He scanned another kid at the playground and knocked him out on accident when he was three. Out in the community, not in the family. His parents freaked out about it. He's, like, Mom-strength, and they're not, so it was decided he needed some more advanced training so he could learn to control himself."

"And they didn't come out here with him?" They had already played several moves; Miriam played extremely quickly, seemingly without a lot of forethought. She responded to each of his moves within a second. Jarod considered his options more and settled on a strategy that attacked her fairly aggressively. It had been nearly thirty years since he was trained at chess.

"Well, they have two other boys and a job and now another baby on the way. I think it was a lot for them to handle. Mom and Marion have been working on getting them all out here. They're supposed to visit at Thanksgiving, but maybe they'll come earlier if the Healing goes off in October. But the baby's due at the beginning of November so who knows?" The gathering of telepaths to help Angelo was tentatively set for mid-October, which meant Jarod needed to plan to retrieve him from the Centre at the beginning of the month. Vern had declared it would be impossible to do before then, due to how busy everyone was with the harvest until the fall. Assuming Angelo wasn't in any danger until then. Jarod hadn't heard from him since the bombing.

"Has he improved his abilities since being here?"

"Oh yeah, a ton. He hasn't done anything to you, right? We warned him about twenty times not to scan you when he shook your hand."

_Well_ _isn't_ _that reassuring_ , thought Jarod. 

He made an unexpected move, hoping to catch her off guard. For the first time she hesitated, then gave him a look that clearly said, _Are you sure you want to do that?_ Jarod tried not to smile. He realized how much he would enjoy seeing her play in a real tournament against people of her own level, rooting her on. That would be impossible at the moment, of course. He had to presume Lyle at least would be looking for him with a possible genius-level twelve-year-old girl, and although Miss Parker had been left out of the loop on the Wallaces, you never knew when she or Broots might catch on. He really needed to get on top of the latest at the Centre.

Three moves later she took his bishop. She was crushing him. "What level would you say you play at? Grandmaster?"

"Oh no, they beat me all the time on ICC and Chesscafe. I'd say I'm around 2400. That's International Master range. I play as Myzsterychick online."

"They know you're a girl?"

"I think it adds to the allure of playing me." He had to chuckle at that.

"Do you have internet access in the treehouse?"

"No. Mom won't let me. I ... might have looked up the Centre once from the community college."

"I bet there was yelling after that. Myzsterychick needs to be extremely careful what she says and does online. You shouldn't reveal anything about where you are, ever."

"I don't. I use a random IP generator so they can't tell where I'm dialing in from. Right now the going theory is that I'm Russian and I only sneak online in the middle of the night." She sounded very amused. Then she glanced at the board and put him in check. "This game is a sinking ship for you, Jarod."

"I can see that. Do you know any other games, ones where I might not be demolished in eleven minutes flat?"

"I'm pretty good at Go, but I haven't spent a lot of time actually studying it or anything. Wanna play that?"

"I would love to."

 

******

 

That night Jarod managed to get to sleep without too much difficulty. When the nightmare came, it didn't disturb the entire household this time. He woke up gasping and disoriented as usual, and Annalise was already coming into his room. She didn't say a word, just leaned over and took his hand, and his anxiety almost instantly vanished and he fell back asleep.

 

******

 

The next day, after Vern had him chop wood all morning and he subsequently ate a huge breakfast for all that physical labor, Jarod sat down with Annalise to work on memory. They faced each other across a small table, and Annalise placed her hands out, face up, on the table. Jarod rested his hands on top of hers.

"Okay, so to start, we'll just try to have me read a memory without agitating your mind or calling up any defense mechanisms. I want you to think of something that made you happy, from when you were a kid but not too young. Something you remember well. Don't say anything, just picture it clearly in your mind."

He thought of the time he had snuck out onto the roof to feel snow. It had taken nearly a half an hour of climbing up a service shaft for thirty seconds of snowflakes falling on his face, but it had been worth it. He could feel something on the edge of his mind, gently touching him, but he somehow knew she didn't have access to the actual memory. Not yet.

"Now say out loud one word you strongly associate with this memory."

"Snow." As he said it, the memory was triggered even more clearly, almost as if his mind was running a simulation. He could feel the tiny ice crystals melting on his face, how out of breath he was from all the climbing, that his nose and ears hurt a little bit from the cold, how frigid and fresh and delicious-smelling the air was compared to what was in the sublevels all the time. Suddenly he had the sensation of someone else standing there with him, and he knew she had seen the memory. But it didn't bother him, he still felt happy and at peace. They both opened their eyes.

"You really are very good at projecting, Jarod."

"I've had a lot of years to practice imagining things."

"Mmmmmm. Maybe tomorrow we should try a sim, see if I can tell the difference between that and a real memory."

"Tomorrow then."

 


	9. Inception

A week after arriving at the Wallaces, Jarod finally took a break. Ostensibly the excuse was to pick up the restriction enzymes from Vern's post office box in Eugene, but in reality Jarod just needed to get away from the constant intimacy that resulted from living with five mindreaders. They were all just _so_ brutally honest, and after a lifetime of living in a world of extreme emotional repression -- a world in which even the bald-faced murder of a woman in front of two children is papered over -- followed by two years of faking his identity, it was a bit much to have daily conversations with people who not only knew who he was, but were happy to dissect both his past and his mind at every opportunity. He just wanted a day to eat ice cream, check his email, follow up on some of the leads from Annalise's story, and people watch from a cafe with utter anonymity.

So naturally he called Sydney.

"What would you have done if you had found out about Nicholas when he was still a child?"

"Jarod! I would have done everything in my power to be a part of his life." Jarod didn't care if this was a self-serving lie, it was exactly what he wanted to hear.

"Even if it would have endangered him, from the Centre?"

"Jarod ... have you found something about your family?"

He glanced at the insulated ice box with the enzymes. "Maybe. Does the name 'Donoterase' mean anything to you?"

"No, I'm sorry. What's this really about, Jarod?"

"The Centre may have more children. More than Davy Simpkins. Please, Sydney, if you find out anything, let me know."

"And you're afraid they may be related to you?"

Jarod paused and closed his eyes. He suddenly longed for brutal honesty, to sit down with Sydney and hold a real conversation, one that wasn't layered with obfuscation and manipulation. Maybe Annalise and the others were rubbing off on him. He knew what _she_ would say about this phone call.

"Yes, I have reason to believe that the Centre has used my genetic material to try to create more Pretenders. You haven't happened to have heard any rumors to that effect, have you?" His voice came out more bitter than he intended. 

Now it was Sydney's turn to pause on the other end. "If I knew anything about such a project, I would have tried to stop it." Jarod sighed. A non-committal answer as usual, but it may have been true. Even before his escape, Sydney knew how obsessed he was with his family, the lengths he would go to find and protect them. A project involving new Pretender offspring would be a direct threat to _his_ Pretender program, if only for the bombshell effect it would have had on Jarod's psyche were he to find out.

"Have you seen Angelo lately?"

"I haven't _seen_ much of anything until recently, but he is as well as can be. He's regressed completely back to his old self."

"I'm glad you have your eyesight back, Sydney," Jarod said softly, and hung up. He went to a convenience store to stock up on Pez, then decided to head home.

 

******

 

"Here we go, moment of truth."

They sat across the table from each other in the treehouse, the gel run in front of them and UV light in hand, both nervous and excited. Jarod was a little stunned to realize that he was most worried that results might be negative. What would he do then, just bid her goodbye and add her to the long list of Centre Mysteries That Need Solving? It had only been a little over a week and he already couldn't stand the thought of abandoning her.

They had spent the morning prepping the DNA and setting up the agarose gel. Miriam was vaguely aware of the principles behind gel electrophoresis, but had never taken a biology lab course and so had not done it personally. Each of the three DNA samples had been exposed to the restriction enzymes Jarod had ordered, cutting them into fragments of various lengths. Then, using an electric current, they were then run through a Jello-like matrix to separate the fragments by length. The end result was a banded pattern distinctive to each person. A child would share half of her pattern with each parent. 

The gel had been zapped for a couple of hours and now they were examining the results with an ultraviolet lamp. There were three columns of bands, Annalise's and Jarod's on the outside, Miriam's in the middle for easy comparison. Jarod put a piece of glass over the gel and circled all of Miriam's bands that matched one or the other columns. Every band was accounted for. The results were unequivocally positive.

They grinned and hugged each other for a good long while, then Miriam ran at top speed down the hill to tell her mother.

 

******

 

"Is this as strange for you as it is for me?" He sat down next to Annalise on the porch swing in the rapidly cooling evening air. After dinner Miriam was responsible for putting her young charges -- both animal and human -- to bed, and Vern and Marion tended to disappear to their basement room after cleaning up. That left just Annalise and Jarod, and they now had the habit of sitting on the porch at sunset and talking.

"Well, I've had twelve years to get used to the idea that someone named 'Jarod' might show up in Pennsylvania one day. Although as the years passed and we never got that phone call, I was beginning to think that it never would happen. It could have been much worse. I imagined a lot worse." She wrapped a blanket around herself and glanced up at him. "You're going to stay a little longer, right? I realize you've been shirking your good samaritan duties, but please stay longer. I think Vern wants to get a couple more cords of wood out of you at least."

"I'm going to have to go do some things to set up for Angelo's rescue at some point, that can't be done safely from here."

"That's not for another three months, stay for at least another few weeks. And you've got to stop calling him Angelo, Joan will rip your tongue out and feed it to you if she hears you say that name when she gets here."

"I'll try to remember," he said, amused. "I'll stay at least through July, OK? Annalise, do you have any pictures or video of Miriam when she was younger?"

"I do have some photo albums around here, mostly from birthdays and such. We have an ancient Polaroid in a closet that we break out occasionally. But ... maybe I can just show you directly. From one of my memories. I think you can probably handle transmission now."

He smiled and gave her his hand. Now when he touched her, he felt a slight mental connection immediately, like a presence hovering just out of sight. She claimed that was always there, his mind was now adapting enough to sense it. "Okay, this going to feel weird to you," she said, and with no further warning the memory began.

It _did_ feel weird. The visual was disjointed, more like a series of photographs than a smooth film. A lot of the details, especially in the background, were fuzzy or missing, and the colors seemed strange as well. He immediately felt a severe pain on his lower left abdomen, and realized it was because she had been in pain that day. But then he saw little toddler Miriam, with a chubby round face that barely looked like her, and thin wispy brown hair with a red ribbon barrette on top. It was her second birthday party, and a younger Marion put a homemade cupcake with two lit candles in front of her at the table. She turned to Marion and told her in a know-it-all baby voice that two was _too young_ for burning candles, maybe when she turned three. Everyone laughed at that, and told her to make a wish and blow them out, she wouldn't burn down the house, they promised. Then Miriam said out loud, "I wish my daddy would come visit me," and blew the candles out with a little help from her teenaged cousins, and everyone clapped.

Annalise cut off transmission at that point. "I just remembered that the other day, thought you would like to see. She's been waiting to meet you for a long, long time." Jarod had to blink a few seconds to recover, trying unsuccessfully not to choke up. She let go of his hand and the connection faded, and she patted his shoulder.

"Um ... how come it was so ... jumpy?"

"That's the way most people's memories look from the outside. We're not all geniuses at visualization, you know."

"And all of that pain?"

"Oh. That. I'm surprised you felt that. My left kidney was never the same after I was pregnant, I finally had to have it out about a month after the birthday party. It was a terrible infection by the time I got away at NuGenesis. Fortunately the right one has hung in there."

He frowned at that. "You've been getting checkups on it, right?"

"Yes, doctor, all labs looked good as of four months ago."

"If you can transmit that memory, do you think you can try to read my old suppressed memories?"

She rested her head on his shoulder. "Yeah. But let's wait until tomorrow to dredge up trauma and flashbacks. Today only good memories." And she took his hand to give him more.

 

******

 

The next afternoon they sat across the table yet again for another memory exercise. Miriam wanted to watch this time, and Annalise allowed it with the stipulations that she sit still, not say anything, not touch them, basically do nothing to disturb her concentration.

"All right. I assume what you really want to go for is the kidnapping?" He nodded, controlling his breathing with some relaxation techniques. "I think it might be better to first go for something before that, with your parents. If you can remember what they look like or other details about your life with them, it might trigger a more complete picture at the traumatic event. Yesterday we were doing birthday parties, those are nice and memorable from early childhood. How old do you think you were when you were brought to the Centre?"

"I believe four."

"So there was probably a birthday party when you turned four. What do you see when you think your mother's face and a birthday cake?" He did picture something resembling a party, but Annalise immediately recognized that it was incorporating elements from the memories of Miriam's parties of the day before. "This is no good, Jarod, you're already altering things by filling in gaps of the picture with other elements in your mind. I know it's tough but you've got to try not to sim it. You want what really happened, not what you imagine could have happened." She could feel his frustration level rising dramatically, but he didn't say anything. He just closed his eyes and tried to erase everything from his mind.

"Let's do something simpler. Try to picture the house you lived in. Any visual at all inside the house." The only thing he remembered from the house was a flash of his bedroom at the kidnapping, which she privately thought was another bad sign. She continued anyway. "Okay, your bedroom. Picture it during the day." To the surprise of both of them, he was able to visualize it quite easily. Spatial memories are stored in a different area of the brain than events, she knew, so that could be a way in. 

"Walk into the hallway from your bedroom." He did so, and saw the hallway. It had a small window letting in light from one end, and some photos hanging on the walls. She was tempted to have him take a look at the photos, but that would be a prime opportunity for his mind to fill in the blanks with a false memory, so she demurred. 

"Walk away from the light, down the hall." He walked down the hall, and saw a small bathroom with light green tile. On the other side was another bedroom. 

"Go into the bedroom." He did so, and saw it was his parents' bedroom. There was a large bed made up with a colorful granny square quilt. Next to the bed was a crib with yellow animal print sheets, and a mobile hanging over it. Small model airplanes hung from the mobile.

"Walk out and move down the hall." The hall came out onto a tiny kitchen, with white-painted cabinets, an old gas range, and a bulbous round fifties-style refrigerator. There was a window with blue cotton curtains, and some flower pots in the window sill. Attached to the kitchen was a small dining space, with a round wood table and three chairs, and a high chair with a red and blue Mickey Mouse vinyl seat. In the corner was a bin of toys: Lincoln logs, Tinker toys, some cast iron trains and cars and planes. There was a smell associated with the kitchen, like a pot roast was in the oven.

"Walk out of the kitchen." He walked into a living room, and the smell followed him. The living room held the foyer entrance to the house, with three yellow glass windows inlayed in the front door. The room had beige carpeting, a small sofa and two chairs, and a side table with a brass lamp on it. There was a beautiful teak sideboard against one wall with some vases and baby and wedding photos on top of it. The walls were hung with a couple of framed floral prints, and a crucifix with a dried palm frond tucked inside of it hung near the front door. In the corner of the room there was a metal netted playpen. The playpen had a small boy standing up in it, with brown hair and bright blue eyes and about 18 months old, playing with a red fire engine and wearing footie pajamas. There was a door to another room next to the playpen.

"Go through the door." The door led to a den or office space. It was darker room with some brown leather chairs and a large desk and a green office chair. Jarod's father was sitting in the chair, talking on a telephone. He was a young man probably in his late twenties, with very short buzz-cropped dark hair, dark brown eyes, a round face. He smiled at Jarod's unseen phantom self, a dimpled smile, and gestured to a large pile of Erector set pieces in the corner. They were building something, a castle of some sort with towers and pulleys and trebuchets mounting an attack. Jarod opened his mouth to say something, but as soon as he did the mental point of view of himself as a child vanished, and the memory collapsed.

Both Annalise and Jarod opened their eyes and stared at each other. "Holy crap, I can't believe that actually worked!"

"So you think it was real, and not a sim?"

"Oh yeah."

Miriam broke in. "WHAT? What did you see?" He let go of Annalise and took Miriam's hand, and this time did sim it on replay, trying to recall every detail for her. Annalise was a little impressed she was able to read him so easily, without any practice with each other so far as she knew. He was getting better and better at projecting in a way that made it easy for any of them to read.

"Okay, let's do the kidnapping now." He closed his eyes held out his hands for more.

"Uh-uh, your brain needs a break, plus you don't want this memory from today to unduly influence that memory. Maybe tomorrow." 

Jarod opened his eyes and sighed.

 

******

 

Annalise managed to put off retrieving the kidnapping memory for a week before Jarod figured it out. They had found some other interesting ones, including his play interview for the new school he was supposedly going to attend, and a Christmas one that may have involved grandparents. But every day she seemed incredibly reluctant to try for the night he was stolen. He came and sat down next her on the porch swing, mummified in her blanket reading a book.

"I'm sorry."

She put her book down. "What, did you do something?"

"I'm sorry I've been pressuring you to relive the kidnapping when you didn't want to do it. When you're afraid it will remind you of when you were captured." A brief look a pain shot across her face, and he knew he was right.

"It's been a long time since _I've_ had a nightmare, and I just didn't want to start that up again. I thought I could work up to it, but was too chickenshit to tell you what the problem was. I'm sorry too." They sat for a long minute in silence, gently leaning against each other. Finally she made a decision and stuck out her hand. "Here. Let's do it now before I change my mind."

"You really don't have to if you don't want to."

"I'm never going to feel less anxious than sitting on the porch, wrapped in a blanket on a warm summer evening. Seriously, now or never." He took her hand. "Now you narrate what you already remember, prompt yourself to start. Just talk about events you see and hear, not what you are feeling."

"I remember going to bed. Mom gave me a lunchbox for the new school. I was so excited I wore my school clothes to bed. Then I saw a light. A headlight. Someone pulling up in the driveway. There's a ... a noise."

Annalise noted that he was not waking up in the memory. The attack must have started very soon after he went to bed. He was starting to panic into a flashback loop, she needed to keep him focused. "Where are your parents right now?"

"It sounds like the living room. There's shouting. My ... my dad is shouting. There's a crash. The baby is crying. I hear footsteps down the hall. I know it's not my parents. Someone comes into my room and grabs me over the mouth. They put something over my head so I can't see."

"Stop narrating out loud now and just try to visualize it in your mind. What can you hear?"

_They pull me out of bed. I hear the baby crying. I hear more shouting, my mom is screaming_. She could feel him being dragged down the hall, out into frigid winter air, then into a car. She could hear some sort of major struggle happening in the house as they pulled him out. The baby's crying could be heard right up until they slammed a car door. Not Jarod's car. There were two cars. They closed him in the second vehicle, and he could no longer hear any shouting or crying. Someone says "Go, go now," and the car begins to move forward. The voice had a foreign accent. They drive and drive and drive, and Jarod, originally frozen in terror, begins to cry, and eventually lays down in the backseat and falls asleep.

_Okay, that's it, open your eyes_. He did, they both did, they were clutching onto each other. She continued to hold his hand until his heavy breathing and fear subsided.

"What ... what did you see? I don't know if that's more information than what I started with." He sounded disoriented, like he did sometimes when waking up from a nightmare.

"Pretty sure it is. One, your parents sure as hell knew what was going on and put up a fight. They didn't sneak you out in the middle of the night. Two, I think your brother was taken at the same time and put into a different car."

He nodded. "How are you doing?"

"Fine for now, we'll see about tonight. We might both wake up from flashbacks from this one."

In the end, only Jarod had a nightmare, one in which he and Kyle and Jack and Davy were all confused, and Annalise was able to quickly put him back to sleep, as she had virtually every night since his arrival.

 

******

 

And so a few weeks passed, with Jarod growing more and more comfortable with life at the Wallaces, and caring less and less about baiting the Centre for information. He began to love how they had a rhythm to each day and week, and also the year he was told, although he had only experienced the busy long summer season. Monday was Library Day, which he soon found out was not just for Miriam to renew her book piles and play chess online, but that Annalise also spent hours looking up whatever interested her. Tuesday was Cleaning Day, when everyone did minimal duty in the fields and then ran around the rest of the day scrubbing the house from top to bottom. Wednesday nights Miriam and Jack were required to give detailed oral presentations on whatever new subjects they had learned the previous week, with the adults grilling them like a mini graduate thesis defense panel. Thursday's meal conversation was traditionally was what Jarod privately thought of as the Alternate History Sim Dinner. Vern would pose a historical question of moderate obscurity -- what if Saladin hadn't won the Battle of Hattin? what if the Catholic Church had granted Henry VIII a divorce? -- and they would all proceed to argue about how history would have changed under those circumstances. This was a game Jarod naturally thought he was very good at, but the others, especially Annalise, took great pleasure in ganging up on him and arguing the opposite viewpoint to the death. 

Friday night everyone ate homemade pizza then went out for a sport called bowling, which could be enjoyably played at all skill levels (even Jack could sort of roll a lightweight ball down the lane) but it turned out that Marion of all people was very cutthroat at it. Jarod divined the physics of the game very quickly, so after a couple of weeks it devolved to Team Marion versus Team Jarod, with Miriam on his team, Vern on her team, Jack on everybody's team, and Annalise vacillating her allegiance. Saturday night was Date Night, where they alternated weekends so that either Vern and Marion went out alone, taking a break from the care of his brother, or Annalise and Miriam and now Jarod went out to the movies. He was surprised that Annalise loved going to the movies as much as she did, given her predilection against electronics and flashy things in general. She described her experience of a movie as "like taking a bender, a hell of a lot of fun while you're doing it but you regret it with the headache the next morning." Jarod had no desire to go on a bender to test that hypothesis, but it was amusing nonetheless.

Sunday was another day they gave up most agricultural activities. In the morning Marion and Vern went to church, Annalise often slept in and Jarod played with the kids all morning. In the evenings they made an unusually large roasted chicken dinner, frequently with neighbors as guests, then played music after dinner. Annalise and Miriam both preferred the violin, while Vern and Marion were good piano players, and Jarod started practicing it as well. When he saw Marion with the piano, he couldn't resist asking if her sister Joan played it too. Marion had given him a strange, sad look, and said that Joan had indeed been amazing on the piano, the best in the family, but it had been many years since she played it.

Jarod took a guess. "Timmy was very good at the piano, and now she won't touch it?"

"That's right. He always loved the piano. Can he ... still play?"

"No."

Then one Monday in early August, Jarod took Miriam up to the local county library and worked on his own research while she played chess on her new computer. He had successfully prevailed on Annalise to get Miriam a laptop for her online activities, one with much better software installed so that her true location would be hidden. The likes of Broots could easily crack the programs she had surreptitiously installed on the college library computers. He had been unable to convince Annalise to allow a satellite linkup from the farm, however, so they still had to go into town for an Internet connection.

He checked the email account for the web site he had set up about his parents, and was astonished to discover there was a legitimate lead. The site contained all information he had on his parents, including the photos of his mother and a drawing of his father he made after provoking the memory from the Michigan house. He designed the site so that anyone putting certain key words such as "Major Charles" or "Jarod + Centre" into Alta Vista or any of the other nascent Internet search engines would automatically be routed to his link. The Centre discovered the site two weeks ago and had sent him several false requests for "meetings," but fortunately it was trivial to discern their origin. This email, however, appeared to come from a real person. Someone named Mike Brodie, from just outside the Ramah Navajo reservation in New Mexico, claimed to have known his father as a child in the 1970s. Jarod called him and based on his voice decided his intentions were true, and set up a meeting for two days hence. He was going to have to leave Oregon.

 

******

 

That evening, after Jarod had broken the news to everyone at dinner that he was driving to New Mexico the next day, they sat on the swaying porch swing in comfortable silence.

"You're really coming back, right?"

"I promise I'll come back. Why do you keep asking me that?"

"You kind of have a history as a gypsy, Jarod. What if you find someone else who tugs at your heartstrings, then another and another? The world is filled with people who could use your help."

"I will always come back. I can't miss the glorious teenage years, can I? But I really need to find my parents and my sister too."

"I know. What will you do once you find them? Do you think you can let the Centre go, then?"

"They don't seem too inclined to let _me_ go. I think they will always chase me. And I'm afraid they will always chase her. She doesn't even know she's being chased, not in her bones. Now they might want to catch her just so she can be used against me, to get me to cooperate."

Annalise wrapped the blanket around herself tightly and curled up against him. She knew he would do it, go back to slavery again, to save her. "Well. Aren't we cheery tonight. How about nobody gets caught, and we all live happily ever after." 

He smiled and leaned back against her, their heads touching slightly, but not enough to establish the mental link. "Annalise?"

"Yeah?"

"When I come back, would you like to go to dinner? Um, alone?"

"Why, Jarod ... are you asking me out on a date?"

"Yes, I am."

She took so long to respond that he was beginning to think she would say no. Finally she said, "I will say yes for now. But I want you to think about something while you're gone. You're not allowed to comment now, just think about it. I want you to be really, really sure that you are doing this because you like me for me, personally, and not because it fulfills some deep rooted fantasy to complete a family. Okay?"

"Okay."

 

******

 

Later that night he woke up from yet another nightmare. They had been coming far less frequently in the past few weeks, especially since they had ceased the memory exercises. Or perhaps he was still having them , but Annalise was putting him back to sleep so efficiently that he didn't remember anything, it was hard to tell. This time when she came into his room and touched his hand and touched his mind, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the intimacy of what she had been doing all these weeks. When she turned to go, he reached out for her and groggily said, "Wait. Stay with me." He was only partially awake and not really thinking through the logical conclusion of what he was saying. He just wanted to touch her somewhere other than her hand, to feel her body against him, to not sleep alone and lonely as he had done almost every night of his life. She stared at him and ran her fingers down the side of his face, just the fingertips, and for an instant he could viscerally feel what she was feeling: the desire, the latent attraction, the temptation to do exactly what he asked and more. But then she seemed to get control of herself, and the mental transmission stopped, and she left him with a simple message.

_Come back to me and I'll think about it._


	10. Date Night

It took Jarod over a month to come back. First he met with Mike Brodie, got a few critical tidbits about his father, and had a brief inglorious career as a bounty hunter. Then he spent a few days in the desert on a personal spirit quest, an endeavor that ultimately reminded him of his many forays into sensory deprivation chambers, only with heat and dehydration. Then he spent two of the dullest weeks of his life at the St. Louis National Personnel Records Center, posing as a historian and looking up old records related to the Clearwater Air Force base. He was painstakingly constructing a list of all pilots with first name Charles who were assigned at the base at any point in the 1950s -- which turned out to be over 200 people and counting, given the Korean war training taking place there -- and a shorter list of individuals still living who might remember his father. Finally he decided, while he was out and about, to have a crack at the Centre's mainframe for anything related to Donoterase. Their recent security upgrades and scouring of the system for any known flaws that he could conceivably be aware of frustrated that effort, and after three caffeine-fueled days he gave it up, slept for a night, and decided to go home. By that time there were only three weeks left before he was supposed to head out again to spearhead the rescue of Angelo, who was still silent over email.

After flying back to New Mexico and a long day and half of driving he finally arrived near sunset, just as Miriam was coming back to the house. She watched the car for moment to ensure that it was him, alone, then ran up and flung her arms around him.

"I was beginning to think you would never come back. Did you get my emails?" She had sent him long, funny, charmingly childish letters every Monday, sometimes about what was going on around the farm, but mostly about whatever was occupying her mind at the time. They reminded Jarod of the many letters he wrote when he was young to his parents, Miss Parker, Kyle, sometimes even Angelo or Sydney. This was long after they had told him his parents were dead, so he never tried to send them, just wrote them in his secret journal code and imagined what he would say to all of those people, if he had been allowed say whatever he wanted to say.

"I loved your letters, Miriam. You can send them to me even when I'm here." They walked back to the house, and even though Jarod was exhausted from all the traveling he felt comforted and relieved to be there. At what point did he begin to think of this place as his home? Annalise appeared on the front porch with a footie-pajama'ed Jack, and waved.

Annalise put Jack to bed that night and left Jarod and Miriam alone in the kitchen. They raided the pantry to make sandwiches, and picked up on their latest game of Go, and Jarod told her all about his vision quest and what he had learned so far about her grandfather. Finally Miriam began to get tired and excused herself to go to bed. Jarod desperately needed some sleep as well, but he couldn't go to bed just yet. He knew Annalise was waiting for him on the porch.

He walked out and sat next to her, not saying a word. He just took her hand and thought at her, _I promised I would come back_. Then he leaned forward and gently kissed her. The sensation was unlike anything Jarod had ever experienced. He could feel both of them at the same time, like an echo of their lips touching in his mind. The awareness of her emotional state was even stronger. He could feel her anticipation and arousal, and his as well, so they seemed to feed off of one another and magnify. Finally Jarod broke it off, leaning his forehead against hers, breathing hard.

_Is that what you mean by feedback?_

 _Weird, huh?_ _I could stop transmission but where's the fun in that? You'll get used to it._ And she ran the fingers of her free hand on the back of his neck to pull him in for another kiss, deeper this time. He let go of her hand, which diminished the echo for a moment, but then they were both touching each others' face and neck, the new skin to skin contact itself echoing along with the kiss. The erotic sensation escalated so fast that Jarod was sure he would soon be unable to resist taking off their clothes right there on the chilly porch and touching her everywhere. He had never wanted to touch someone's body more in his life, wanted to run his hands all along her back and press the full length of her body against his, to maximize the sensation with as much skin as possible. She slid her hands down from his neck to the top of his chest inside of his shirt, and he was just about to insist that both of their shirts come off _right now_ , when she suddenly pushed him back slightly and broke off the kiss.

_We should stop now. I believe I was promised a date?_

Jarod could barely comprehend stopping now, but somewhere in the depths of his mind all those years of training kicked in and he summoned up the willpower, if that's what she wanted. _A ... a date? Right. What would you like to do?_

Annalise laughed and said out loud, "I believe there is sushi in your future, Jarod. You need some sleep tonight, though." She left him alone on the porch, hanging yet again, and he groaned and stretched out on his back on the swing in fatigue and frustration.

 

******

 

The Japanese restaurant was the only one in all of Douglas County, and the owner was both a produce client and friend of Annalise's. The weather was still warm and lovely, probably one of the last nice weekends according to popular opinion , so they sat at a table outside, dressed smartly and relaxed. Annalise was actually wearing a skirt, which Jarod had never witnessed before. He had fretted a some over his clothes back at the house, despite not having a lot of wardrobe choices and not normally concerning himself with it too much. He often felt like clothes were just a prop or costume, something you had to do to fit in, but tonight he actually cared about looking good, and had very little frame of reference to accomplish that. He asked Marion for an opinion, Miriam being too young for date-appropriate fashion advice, and she had looked highly amused and assured him that a black T-shirt and leather jacket would go over just fine. 

The owner brought them tea and miso soup, all delicately arranged. They didn't even request anything off the menu, Annalise just asked the owner start bringing whatever food she thought was freshest and best that day. Annalise asked Jarod if in all his travels he had ever been to Japan. He responded no, that he had never even eaten sushi before, except for the time he learned to dissect blowfish.

"Wow, a modest start to an activity as usual. I would love to go. Not maybe Tokyo, that seems overwhelming, but my idea of a dream vacation would be quiet little _ryokan_ with a spa in the north, full of natural beauty, where your every desire is magically taken care of and you do nothing all day but soak in hot baths, eat good food, and maybe muster up enough energy to take a walk in the garden. Of course this requires getting on a plane."

"You don't like to fly?"

"The only times I've actually done it they knocked me unconscious, but even aside from that it seems fairly horrible. Traveling for hours in a metal tube trapped with a bunch of other anxious people, with only some electronic devices holding us it the air? Yeah, that sounds fun."

"Being a passenger on a commercial flight really isn't particularly fun, but actually piloting a plane ... it IS fun. In a lighter plane there's is really only the wind, the vehicle and you, just relying on physics and aerodynamics and your own instincts to keep you up. And then there's fighter jets, where you get to go 300 miles an hour and try an avoid slamming into a mountain. That's a whole different level of fun."

"You know, between this and the blowfish, you really have a daredevil streak, Jarod. I bet you like race car driving as well."

"I bet you're right." They both laughed.

"So what is your long term plan here, Jarod? Just keep running around mastering new things while the Centre chases you off them one by one? Surely there's more to life."

"Yes, I'm beginning to see that. When I first escaped, it was hard to think about anything other than finding my parents and exploring all the different things I had only experienced in my mind before. It's hard to imagine settling down without knowing who they are, and knowing who I am by extension."

"You know who you are, in your heart. In all the times I've touched your mind never once did it seem like you had a weak sense of identity. Your parents are just a little piece of who you are. Of course it's easy for me to say that, my parents are dead but at least I knew them. We had a pretty adversarial relationship, though."

Jarod seemed shocked by this. He knew from Miriam that her grandparents were gone, although her grandmother had lived with them until she was eight. But he had never heard Annalise talking about them. "You didn't get along with your parents? But your family here seems to work together so nicely."

"Ha, well, that's Vern and Marion, they're wonderful people to know. But my parents, not always, and honestly I was kind of a brat when I was a teenager as well. My parents loved each other but they were not temperamentally suited to one another. They were always having massive fights when I was growing up then passionately making up later, which I just hated and would often go over to my other relatives' houses just to escape them. Then when I was fourteen I met this boy ..."

"You had a boyfriend before the college one? When you were _fourteen_?"

"Yeah ... in my family we tend to start young and pair-bond pretty quickly when we find a compatible partner. Last night, you might have noticed the, uh, addictive nature of sex when you can send and receive from someone. It's even worse when you are young and hormonal. Look at Marion and Vern, they met when they were fifteen and still do it every night."

" _What?_ "

"Why do you think we put them in the basement? It's kind of distracting."

"I don't even ... wait. Are you saying that our daughter, in a mere year and a half, could be possibly dating boys?"

Annalise chuckled. He was fast on the uptake, she had to give him that. "I don't know where she would meet someone of her caliber in this podunk town, but yes, it's possible. I already see them looking at her when we're at the movies."

"You know, I think I could have lived without knowing this information."

"Don't worry Dad, I think you're safe until she goes off to college. Unless some cute young chess master visits, then we might be in trouble."

Jarod groaned. Annalise snagged some sashimi with her chopsticks and waited for him to process this information. "So, what about you?"

"Me?"

"Yes, you, the improbably good-looking individual sitting before me. Tell me you haven't wasted it and have had a fling or two since getting out."

"Ah. Well, there was this one woman." He told her briefly about Nia.

"So you never went back to see her again? Jarod, that's kind of heartbreaking."

"I felt there was a decent probability she was being monitored. Also, I didn't want to get her hopes up for permanent relationship. I ... I couldn't put her in danger like that."

"Hmmm. And what about the predator chick who stalks you in your nightmares sometimes?"

"Miss Parker. She's the daughter of the current Director and the person they've put in charge of finding me. Well, one of them, there seem to be two competing teams nowadays."

"You knew her when you were young? Because sometimes in your inner mind, she's just a girl."

"They introduced us when I was about eleven during an experiment. Then she began to sneak down to see me sometimes when I wasn't doing a sim. She did have a knack for finding me alone. She was the only girl I ever met before escaping."

"That sounds simultaneously sweet and fucked up. Do I even want to know what kind of experiment involves a girl and an eleven year old boy? And now she hunts you down for a living? Nice friend."

"It's ... complicated." He decided to change the subject. "So. Your turn. You were saying you had a boyfriend at fourteen? Whom your parents didn't like?"

"They didn't hate him personally, they just thought I could do better. I mean, he wasn't even a reader and wasn't planning on going to college, so really, they had a point. But I didn't care. He was this gorgeous boy, SO beautiful, I just fell in love instantly. We started sneaking around a lot, which totally enraged my father. They were never very good at controlling me though, so things were tense for quite a while. Finally we broke up, there was drama, there was peace, then I went off to Carnegie Mellon and met Jason late in my freshman year. They did like him."

"Why did you break up?"

"Like I mentioned, he wasn't a reader, and he freaked out after awhile that I could read his mind, know all of his secrets and everything about him and he couldn't know the same about me. It was just too much for an immature sixteen year old. It's a very intense, unrelenting sort of intimacy, getting involved with us. You can never hide your feelings or fake it or have any privacy in your mind. Something for you to think about, Jarod, if you want to continue with me."

"I think I voluntarily gave up my privacy with you a long time ago," he said softly. "Only with you, I don't seem to care. Do you know what moment I realized this?"

"The Hawaii dream? You seemed to relax then."

"No. It was in the car on the way down here. At the very beginning, when you apologized for scanning me, that you knew you had to hurt me but it was necessary to protect someone else. In all my years at the Centre, I've had my privacy violated in just about every way imaginable, and no one ever said they were sorry for any of it no matter how much I hurt. Not Sydney, not anyone." He reached across the table and took her hand, and caught her lingering guilt over the scan. _I forgave you for that ages ago, you've got to forgive yourself. Now can we go home please?_

_Do you have something planned for the rest of this date night?_

_Oh yes._

Annalise grinned and waved to get the check.

 

******

 

At the house they not so quietly snuck upstairs, trying to keep their laughter down as everyone else had just gone to bed. Outside the door to Annalise's bedroom they began kissing each other, not even able to wait until they got inside. Like the previous evening, their arousal began to accelerate from touching and kissing alone, and Jarod backed her up against the door, leaning his body against hers and kissing her neck.

_So can I come in?_

_I don't know, what's your grand plan for the night?_

_Well. First I was going to kiss you._

_OK, check. That seems to be adequate._

_Then I was going to slowly remove all of your clothes, and admire how beautiful you are. Then I want to touch and kiss and suck every square inch of you, to determine which body parts feel as good as your neck. Then I'm going to make love to you, and then very late fall asleep with you, with no clothes on, so I can feel your body throughout the rest of the night. And tomorrow I want to do it all over again._

She moaned and managed to get the doorknob to the bedroom open behind her, and they practically fell in. Standing by the bed, Annalise pulled his shirt out of his pants, running her hands along his torso and pushing the shirt up and over his head. She stared at him a few seconds while he started to undo her blouse as well, then kissed him again and trailed kisses down his chest. When she got to the nipples she brought one into her mouth and sucked hard on it, just to feel what his reaction would be. A surge of pleasure seared through him, then through her, then reflected back to him, and he moaned.

_What, what do you feel when you do something to me, can you feel everything?_

_Do it back to me and find out._

He got her out of her blouse and bra and lingered over her, just as she had done to him. Then he slowly, lightly ran his fingers over her chest, pinching one of her nipples just a bit as a test case, and felt a small jolt that radiated down her body. So he bent over and and took an entire aureola into his mouth, sucking long and hard on it, something he had never done before but which seemed natural and right. She tipped her head back and gasped, and he felt every inch of the intensity of her response, exactly as if it had been done to him, only with body parts he did not have and previously could barely imagine what it felt like to have.

They resumed kissing, wrapping their arms around each other so they were chest to chest, and he was working on blindly undoing the zipper to her skirt when she suddenly thought _Jarod, I have to tell you something._

_Oh god Annalise, please don't say you want to stop again._

_No. It's just that I'm not on any birth control, so we shouldn't have actual sex. I'm sure we can find some alternate fun activities to fill the night._

_Duly noted, now help me with this_ _damned_ _skirt._

She smiled and unzipped her skirt, then undid his pants for good measure. When they were fully unclothed they finally laid down on the bed, continuing to caress and kiss and explore one another's bodies.

Jarod discovered fairly quickly that her problem with sex extended far beyond birth control. She was right; it was impossible to keep likes or dislikes a secret while they were connected in such a way. She did not want to be penetrated, and she felt anxiety and repulsion if he touched her near her vagina at all. He could well imagine what sort of trauma could create such an aversion, and she plainly did not want to talk about it. Not tonight. He let it go and concentrated on the parts that gave her pleasure, that gave them both pleasure. 

They touched each other for hours. Jarod could not get enough; he wanted to feel her skin all over him even if it wasn't overtly erotic. It was as if his body craved unlimited quantities of physical contact to make up for years of touch deprivation. Even with Nia, which had been slow and sensual, he had not felt anything like this. It had unfortunately been freezing cold that night, and they had been forced to put their clothes back on in short order, so he couldn't touch her the way he wanted to touch her. 

After awhile they developed a sort of game where one of them would push the other as close to orgasm as possible without actually going over. Then they would switch, over and over again. It was most prolonged state of arousal Jarod had ever been in, and he doubted Annalise had ever done it quite this way for so long either. Finally at about one in the morning he felt drowsiness starting to overtake her, which he was fascinated to see was nothing like himself falling asleep. His body often got tired long before his mind, and he would lie in bed trying to rest, trying to quiet his thoughts, frequently without achieving either. Whereas for her sleep was like a physical weight pressing down on her mind, something she was not going to be able to resist for much longer.

_We're going to have wrap this up now love_ , she mindtalked to him, and like she had so many times earlier in the night she took him in her hand and began to stroke him, exactly the way he liked. Only this time she didn't stop when she felt he was close, she kept going, bringing him to a long shattering orgasm that they both could feel. She nuzzled his chest and put her head on it, clearly intending to fall asleep. 

_Oh no no no, you can't go to sleep yet, it's your turn._ She mumbled some incoherent half-hearted protests, but he could feel she wasn't done yet. So he gently rolled her onto her back and took a nipple into his mouth, while simultaneously reaching down with a hand and rubbing her clit, a combination he now knew would drive her crazy extremely quickly. When she came it didn't feel anything like when he did, with pleasure and muscles spasming deep inside her, a strange and wonderful sensation to Jarod. He wondered what it would be like if they ever got coordinated enough to come at the same time. Then she really did curl against him and fall asleep, one arm resting on his chest. He smiled and kissed her forehead, and extinguished the light to go to sleep too.


	11. The Demon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the triggery chapter, skip it if this may be an issue. You'll get the gist from the context of the surrounding chapters.

_The_ _y_ _are_ _suffocating_ _together in the blackness_ _, smothered in a place where not even a dim shard of light is possible but has been replaced with agony. Every part of their body feels nothing but pain now, the_ _pain_ _and burning_ _is growing_ _lik_ _e_ _fiery_ _cancer_ _tentacles spreading upwards_ _and_ _it_ _will reach her soon, and by then will kill them_ _both_ _. They_ _have had their hands and arms chopped off and their tongue chopped off and legs glued, so they are no longer a person but a shapeless amoeba barely able to wriggle at the bottom of the airless inky sea, bloated._

_There is a brief blinding light, but it is no longer a sign of salvation. It simply means the demon is back to hurt them even more._

_There is no longer any such thing as sight but they can feel his lust and anticipation and he sits there breathing to increase their terror. Then he cannot wait any longer and rolls the amoeba over and to prolong the agony stabs and shreds them again and again_

 

Jarod woke up from the horror to find Annalise shrieking and flailing in bed, unable to escape the nightmare. It was pitch black in the room. His first instinct was to restrain her, both to try to calm her down and to avoid getting kicked, but that only caused her to become more hysterical and fight back even harder, and he suddenly felt the consciousness-ripping scan beginning. He had the presence of mind to let her go and flip on an electric lamp on the bedside table, nearly knocking over the smaller oil lantern they had been using earlier. Some combination of the sudden light or electrical surge woke her up, and she hugging a pillow, staring at the light and taking great gulps of air, trying to get control of her terror and her mind. At last she looked up at Jarod, and he knew she was conscious enough to know where she was and who he was. He slid over to her and wrapped his arms around her, and felt an almost overwhelming sense of fear and shame and anger and self-loathing, and knew she was doing everything in her power to avoid breaking down into sobs. He tried to comfort her, to hold her without making her feel like she was being held down, and didn't say anything until she was ready to talk.

Finally in a shaky voice she said, "I'm ... I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you to keep the light on. I hope I didn't hurt you."

He stroked her cheek and touched his forehead to hers. "Shhh. There's nothing to be sorry for. _I'm_ the one who's sorry."

Just then there was a soft knock, and a worried voice came through the door. "Mom? Are you OK?" Jarod was suddenly acutely aware that they were both completely nude, and wondered if he should at least put his pants on.

"I'm all right honey, can you just put Jack back to bed? Thanks." She didn't sound all right at all, and Miriam paused at the door for quite a few seconds before they heard her pad back down the hall. They heard some low murmuring of voices, so Marion must have come upstairs, but no one else came to their room.

They held each other in silence for a long while, until Jarod felt her tension and anxiety starting to ease. "I guess it's time to spill the whole story."

"You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."

"No. No more secrets. I want you to know everything." She took a deep breath and let it out again. "I've never actually said this to anyone out loud, just my family saw during the Healing, so it might be hard to get through. I was afraid of triggering a flashback, but I guess that's moot point now, isn't it? Well. So. I was at Donoterase only for a few weeks. They still had hope I would cooperate with their damned tests, and I still had hope of escaping from there. There was this very young man there in charge of security. He called himself Mr. Lyle, although that's not the name he has for himself in his mind."

She heard Jarod gasp and felt an involuntary wave of anguish go through him. "No. Not _him_."

"Yes. I know I've seen him in your mind."

"He killed my brother and almost killed me."

"Yes. Well, he was an acolyte of Raines then, and I got the impression it was his first important job for the Centre, that he wanted to do well and impress them. And since he was head of security I figured he knew how to get in and out of the facility, so naturally he became a prime target. As they were escorting me back to my cell one day we passed him in the hall, and I 'fell' against of him and scanned him.

"As soon as I did it I knew it was a terrible mistake. In his mind there were horrible things, things he had done to some women and a kid at his school, and horrible things done to him as well. I could instantly tell he had a cold white hatred of anyone who made him feel weak and powerless, bottomless rage against it, and he would bide his time and pursue to the ends of the earth anyone who made him feel that way. And that short list of people now included me.

"He certainly had patience for his revenge, because it was many months until I saw him again, although sometimes I could feel him outside my room. He waited until Raines gave up on me for his psychometric experiments, and waited until I was far enough along in my pregnancy that concern over miscarriage wasn't so high. And it was only then that he began to torture me. They had me completely restrained and catheterized, and kept me in the dark most of the time, and bombarded me with stimuli so I had a constant migraine and couldn't think. It was hard to even remember who or what I was, after awhile. The only thing I could do at that point was talk to Miriam. I had her named already, I'd sing songs or tell her stories or whatever, and that was the only thin line connecting me to sanity.

"Lyle started coming into my room, and he would sit by me as I was immobilized and tell me in a sickeningly calm voice all the things he fantasized about doing to me, and then he would rape me. Over and over again, the same pattern, day after day. He did it from behind and I was bundled up so there was very little actual skin contact, so I tried to scan him and failed, and I tried to transmit and he did get a little of that, only it made him more excited. The talking may have been the worst part before the infection set in, though. He'd tell me how he wanted to chop off various body parts until bit by bit I was reduced to a limbless mass, how when the baby was born they'd have no further use for me so he'd be free to rape me to death, how they were going to raise my daughter in a windowless closet and when she was a few years old he'd come back and have her too. And I could tell everything he said to me was absolutely, one hundred percent sincere."

Annalise had tears streaming down her face at this point and so did Jarod. He had tried his best not picture it all as she was talking, but he was indeed highly triggerable by mental imagery as she had once pointed out, and with that and the dream and the transmission of her emotions as she spoke, it practically impossible for him not to sim it to a certain degree. It occurred to him that if sexual attraction and pleasure were reflected and amplified between them, then grief and horror might be as well.

"That's not the worst part."

_What on Earth could possibly be worse?_ thought Jarod, then instantly regretted it, as of course she could hear.

_I_ _seriously considered_ _killing he_ _r_ _. I couldn't kill myself, but I could destroy her mind, so he and they could never have her. The only reason I didn't was because I thought we were both going to die anyway._ She was fully crying now, burying her face in his chest, and he wrapped his arms around her and caressed her hair. _So that's the sort of woman you are in bed with Jarod, a person who would assault the father of my child and murder that child._

Jarod couldn't take her guilt and self-recrimination any longer. "Look at me." He tipped her face towards his. "Please, look at me. It doesn't matter what you thought, it matters what you did. You didn't do anything to her. You saved her. You saved yourself. And now she's growing up to be an amazing person. You couldn't have done any better." He held her until the shaking stopped and he felt fatigue starting to overtake her.

"Jarod?" She sounded groggy, spent. "Can you light the oil lamp and turn off the electric one?"

"Yeah, of course." He did as she asked, then they curled up together and fell asleep, again.


	12. Departure

The next morning Jarod woke up later than usual, diffuse white light streaming through the windows. Annalise was still out cold, and he kissed her cheek and the crook of her neck. He got out of bed but left the lamp lit, even though there was plenty of light in the room now.

Downstairs Marion was setting the table for brunch, while Jack sat at one end diligently writing out his letters. She looked up and smiled greetings at Jarod. "She's still asleep? We'll let her go until ten, her brain needs a lot of sleep. I assume she finally told you everything?"

He nodded. "She said you did a Healing, did you ... see?"

She glanced at Jack, as if to signal they should watch what they say. "Yes, some of it. We erased some of her memories and associations that were preventing her from functioning. You can't imagine what terrible shape she was in when she first came back to us. She had a 104 degree fever and was severely dehydrated and was practically in kidney failure, but refused to go to the hospital. Refused to see our family doctor, or any other man. Refused to leave my sister Helen's basement, even though enclosed spaces and the dark made her hysterical. And of course we needed to move her to a more obscure location, they began monitoring the close relatives almost immediately. To this day I think it's a miracle she and the baby both survived."

"Does Miriam know?"

"She knows someone hurt her, and she knows that the dark will trigger the night terrors. Annalise used to have a lot of nightmares, and she had the baby sleep with her in the bed. So I think Miriam probably saw a lot, but she couldn't know what she was seeing at that age. She might have figured it out by now though." Marion leaned against the counter, wiping her hands with a towel. "Jarod ... I'm glad she finally told you. But be careful not to evoke the past too much. She's not the same person she was then, thank God. She's healed to a remarkable degree, and by starting up a relationship with you she wants to move forward with her life."

"But I must unconsciously remind her of the Centre."

Marion shrugged. "I doubt it. She did all that memory work with you and didn't have a single nightmare. Miriam could in theory remind her of all that's happened, but she doesn't either. Just be her friend in the here and now. Oh and Jarod ... I know it's a challenge but it would help if you let her go to sleep at a decent hour." She almost kept a straight face as she said this. And Jarod, thinking of Annalise's basement comment, almost kept a straight face as he nodded his assent.

 

******

 

It was a Friday and the rest of the family went out for their traditional bowling, but Annalise and Jarod bowed out that evening. As soon as everyone was gone Annalise wrapped her arms around him, not even kissing, just holding each other a tight embrace. They hadn't had a chance to speak privately all day.

"You're feeling better?" 

"Yeah, I think I've recovered. I hate breaking down like that."

"Everybody's got to let it out occasionally. It's not like there wasn't a good cause."

"I'm going to remember you said that, the next time you try and repress something. No, I just don't like feeling like a victim. I hate feeling irrationally guilty when there's nothing to feel guilty about. I've had enough of all that for one lifetime." She hugged him tighter, burying her face in his neck. _So thank you for dragging me off the guilt train. It just goes nowhere._

_Annalise..._

_Uh-oh, what?_ She could tell he apprehensive about what he was about to say.

_I was wondering if you might want to work on some exercises_ _to get you more comfortable with vaginal penetration_ _. I mean, work on it together._

Annalise didn't flinch, but she did abruptly cut off transmission as she mulled it over. Jarod was afraid he may have crossed a red line with her. Maybe he had breached the topic too soon.

_The last goddamned trigger._ _You know, I used to like sex._

Jarod nuzzled the side of neck, then slowly sucked on it. _I think there's recent evidence to suggest you still like sex._ She laughed at that, a low throaty laugh that he could feel in his lips. He smiled as he sensed her reaction.

_I will say yes on one condition: That you do this as my lover and my friend, not as my therapist. I_ _do not want to feel like a_ _patient_ _that is being fixed_ _. Are we clear?_

_I_ _don't want to fix you. You are pretty wonderful as is_ _. I just want to share more with you._

They stood there necking for a few minutes, then moved upstairs. When they undressed one another is was leisurely, sensual, unlike the frantic hunger of the previous night. Jarod wordlessly pulled her to the bed and laid down behind her, wrapping his arms around her. He could already feel nervousness creeping into her mood merely from the position they were lying in. He needed to reassure her that he wasn't going to do anything here that she didn't like, and just have her relax. 

"Let's just tell each other a story for now. Describe a memory you have about your body, not sexual, just something you unexpectedly enjoyed." 

She immediately thought of a memory he would like to see, but instead said, "Let's hear yours first."

"Okay. When I was a kid there was very little touching or affection allowed. Sydney made it clear he thought of me as a student, not as a family member, so there was never any hugging or anything like that. So one thing that I always secretly enjoyed was getting my hair cut. The woman who did the haircuts was this mean old nurse in Renewal wing. She was responsible for the personal hygiene of all the long-term patients, and about once a month they'd bring me down there to keep my hair regulation short. She was always scowling, I never once saw her smile. I overheard some of the sweepers refer to her as Nurse Ratchet, which I didn't get as a reference but could tell was supposed to be derogatory. She knew what they were calling her, though, and took a perverse pride in it. 

"Nurse Ratchet secretly liked cutting her patients' hair as much as I liked having it done. She would linger over it much longer than was necessary, slowly shampooing and rubbing and giving a scalp massage. We never spoke to one another, but I always closed my eyes and let her fingers run over me as long as she liked. It sounds a little perverted the way I'm describing it, but this woman seemed about a hundred years old to child me so it wasn't like that at all. It was just pleasant and nice. It was the only time anyone regularly touched me in a more than a perfunctory way. Nurse Ratchet retired when I was about fourteen, and I think I went into mourning a little when I heard about it."

Annalise smiled as he recounted this story, not invading the memory in his mind but enjoying the feeling of happiness he had while telling it. She resisted the urge to turn around and run her fingers through his hair.

"My turn? I'll tell the story but also transmit images in a second. Mine's from when Miriam was only a few days old. She was born here, right here in this room on this bed. And let me tell you, childbirth hurts like a mofo every bit as much as its reputation says. Plus when you and the baby are both telepaths, you can feel how agonizingly painful it is for her too, and how terrified she is at leaving her universe and entering ours, so the whole thing is incredibly difficult, physically and emotionally."

She took his hand then, to show him the next part. "So its four or five days later, I'm recovering, and I still hurt seemingly everywhere. My kidney hurts, Helen's stitched me up, my uterus is still this soccer ball-sized thing that's trying to bleed out, my breasts are killing me. I'm just a mess. I was lying in bed kind of like now, wearing only sweat pants but nothing on top, because when your trying to nurse a newborn shirts become extremely annoying and superfluous. Miriam was lying near me, wearing nothing but a diaper, on her back and waving her little fists in the air. At that age babies haven't figured out that they are separate from their mamas yet, and honestly it's disconcerting as the mother too: one day you have this presence inside you that's been there for months, and the next there's a real live human being that came out of you. 

"Anyway, as I was laying there watching her, she starts to get angry that she doesn't feel me touching her or feeding her. Not sad or scared, _angry_. Like I've deliberately abandoned her even though I'm only a foot away. So before she even gets to crying I pull her next to me and latch her on and rub her back, and she gobbles the milk down like she's starving when it's really about her twentieth feeding of the day. And as she nurses it feels good, both in that breast and in the uterus, which begins to cramp, but not in a terrible ripping contraction sort of way. It feels like my body is transforming, both going back to the way it was before but also turning into something new. For the first time in a long time I don't hate my body. I had begun to loath it, dissociate from it, it seemed to be nothing but a vessel of pain, pain and more inescapable pain. But now I realize the pain will eventually go away. That it is possible for my body to be a source of comfort and happiness, and that I can be reborn as new as this little baby there."

She transmitted a brief section of the memory to him, so he could see baby Miriam at that age. He marveled at the diminutive wrinkled bald thing. "She's so tiny."

"Yeah, not even seven pounds. She was born a week early, we think."

Jarod thought about the memory for a few seconds, then she suddenly saw it _change_ , and knew he was simming it. She had seen him rerun a few old sims in his mind when they were working on his long-buried memories, but never make up a new one while she was watching. When they were doing the exercises he tried to repress his tendency to actively add in details instead of passively remembering, but now was under no such constraints. The clarity of the scene improved dramatically, so it no longer had the quality of a memory but was more like the direct sensory information someone would feel during an actual experience. He projected himself into the scene so he was lying on the bed with her and Miriam, the baby in between them. When she began to fuss he scooped her up and placed her tummy-down on his bare chest so they were laying skin to skin, and gently rubbed circles on her back much the way Annalise had in the original memory. He put his pinkie in her mouth to suck on, which she did for a short while, then spit it out making slightly displeased noises and fell asleep. Even though the vision wasn't real, he was overwhelmed with a wave of love and protectiveness.

Annalise turned around and kissed his chest on the same spot the baby had slept in his imagination. _I w_ _ish you had been there too. I wish you could have seen everything_. She reached up to pull his face down to hers to kiss him lightly, to comfort him as she could feel his emotions spiraling downwards. He responded distractedly at first, then suddenly shifted gears and began passionately kissing her. They pressed the length of their bodies together, the arousal feedback accelerating even faster than before. Jarod longed to push inside her, to be as close to her as humanly possible, but he knew enthusiasm aside that she was nowhere near ready for it. 

She kissed her way over to his ear and whispered, "You seem a little frustrated. Maybe we can take care of that? It's been awhile but I think I remember how it's done." And then she began to kiss her way downward. When he realized what she intended to do, he pulled back on her to stop.

"What? I have no negative associations with the blow job, I swear."

"It just seems so ... one sided." She burst out laughing at that.

"Trust me, I will make you return the favor for a _long_ time later tonight. Come on, new experiences and all."

Just then they heard the kids coming up the stairs, back from bowling. "Should we go out and help them go to bed?" Jarod asked.

"Naw, I think we have license to act like randy teenagers for a few more days, may as well take advantage."

"Wait ... can they tell what we're doing in here?" 

"Well not _exactly_ what we're doing ... but yeah."

"Even _Jack_?"

"The birds and the bees talk comes early when you can feel emotions between walls, Jarod. He doesn't really get it of course, he just knows grownups sometimes do things that make each other feel good. And to always knock when the door's closed."

"It seems strange." He unexpectedly began to feel self-conscious. It felt a little bit like the Centre's cameras were on him again. She caressed his neck and pulled him in for more kissing.

_No one is watching us._ _We_ _'re not doing anything he hasn't felt_ _since the day_ _he was_ _born_ _, maybe before_ _. Now it's t_ _ime for new experiences, my love._

 

_******_

 

The next day Miriam and Jarod sat on the rug in the treehouse, playing speed Go. They had two boards going simultaneously, one at the main house played the traditional way with unlimited amounts of time to consider each move, and the treehouse board where they only gave themselves five seconds per move. The game at the house was only the third one since they had started Go weeks ago, a slowly evolving thing that was like two fault lines, sliding and pushing and sliding as they staked out respective regions on the board, with an occasional slip-strike earthquake taking out entire chunks. Miriam had a distinct upper hand in the slow game, and was constantly telling him he was trying to consciously plan strategies too far ahead. Some basic research into the game had taught him that, unlike chess, the ability to imagine several dozen moves ahead was the mark of a good Go player, so he in turn pressed her on exactly what she meant by that, how she was imagining the game in her mind. She was chronically unable to describe it to him, simply saying that you had to see the whole board through time, and that his moves were too predictable.

Jarod privately thought she would have made an excellent Pretender. He vowed never to tell her this.

The blitz games they played in the treehouse were an opportunity for both of them to assess new tactics and unconventional stone patterns. She was very good at this as well, but they both played around and made silly mistakes and experimented with patterns that they knew were doomed, so Jarod had managed to win quite a few games. It was also a good opportunity to try out psychological warfare, so the conversations were lively.

"So, does it bother you that your Mom and I are together?"

"No, why should it? You guys are adorable, _and_ you're my parents. It's like cosmic fate working itself out, or something."

"Or something. Do you believe in fate?"

"I believe once certain factors in life are in play, it vastly increase the probability that certain other events will happen." This answer so reminded Jarod of what Sydney might say that he couldn't help but laugh.

"Miriam, there isn't some boy out there you have your eye on, is there?" She wrinkled her nose in distaste. "Too gross a notion to contemplate?"

"I wouldn't go that far. They're just all so ... boring. Why are they so boring? I don't understand. Am I going to have to wait until I grow up to meet someone my age I can be friends with?" Distracted, she made a random move in her game. A mistake.

"I've met lots of interesting people in my travels. Maybe you just need to discover what's interesting in the people around you."

"Hmmm. You're going to have leave again soon, are you afraid of getting caught?"

"No, I just waltzed in there not three months ago. I'm not getting caught." Granted, it hadn't been so easy to waltz out again, what with bombs going off on entire sublevels, but he chose not to mention that.

"You're lying, you're at least a little worried about it."

"Maybe, but I'm still not getting caught."

"Hey, when you're doing a pretend, do you really believe it? Can we tell you're not telling the truth?"

"Your aunt Joan was able to tell right off. The lie detection only works if the person doesn't believe what they are saying, right?"

"Pretty much. Maybe you are not as good at it you think you are."

"Words right out of Annalise's mouth." And he laughed again. 

 

******

 

Thus the last two weeks passed, with the inhabitants of the Oregon farm getting more and more insanely busy. They were trying to finish up all remaining harvesting, overwinter sowing, and pre-freeze cleanup before the other family members descended on the house for the Healing. Jarod had been told repeatedly how those directly involved would be unable to perform basic daily tasks, and could he please monitor XYZ while they were out of it? He was becoming the key go to guy, and was being taught everything he ever wanted to know about how to run a small, self-sufficient operation. This was in addition to planning logistics for getting all participating Wallaces to the farm without being easily tracked by satellite imagery. Jarod was fairly convinced that once Angelo disappeared, it would be considered a declaration of war by the Raines faction at the Centre, and all technologies brought to bear in scrutiny of the Pennsylvania contingent. He wasn't sure how Miss Parker's team would react; they weren't going to be able to keep her out of the loop about Angelo's family much longer, one way or another. Joan hadn't reported a leggy brunette showing up yet, though, so Jarod might have to tip her off, if only to pit them fighting against each other. As usual.

The date of his departure rapidly approached, and both Annalise and Jarod felt it looming over them. She was deeply worried about him going back into the Centre, despite him successfully getting in and out several times in the past two years. She knew from his mind that the Blue Cove complex was an enormous maze of a building, with many secret ways in and out, but it still felt like a trap of some sort. They had to know he was coming. She was not only afraid that he would be captured, but also what he might do if he ran into Lyle. Or not do, she wasn't sure which way she would want that encounter to go.

Jarod had tried to keep his promise to not treat her like a patient, but he couldn't help bringing all the information he had floating in his mind to bear on the aversion problem. He had read quite a few books about healing trauma of various sorts and gave the matter considerable thought. Many therapies for rape survivors had a heavy emphasis on cognitive processing to deal with maladaptive behaviors and emotions. He wasn't sure this was the best approach in Annalise's case. She seemed to have thought through a good deal of the trauma already, and he doubted yet more self-analysis would accomplish much. So in the end, they went with old-fashioned habituation. Every day they went a little bit further, not far enough to trigger a flashback but enough to push the anxiety barrier back. They only worked on it late in their lovemaking sessions, after she had come, and was relaxed and wet and under no pressure. Slowly her fear and repulsion retreated.

They managed to keep their hands off of one another during the day, but the night was a different story, to the point Annalise was becoming significantly sleep deprived. Every day they swore to take a breather, that Jarod would stay in the guest bedroom for real this time, that she really had to have more sleep. They would make it through the day by avoiding each other, but at some point in the evening would touch each other and it would all be over. The feedback would begin again, and they would tumble into their room vowing _just one hour this time_.

The day before he was due to leave was the busiest so far, with Jarod on the phone much of the day and even skipping dinner, unheard of in the household. He came to bed very late, almost afraid she had already fallen asleep, but she was waiting for him, reading. They gave up any pretense of sleep, and yet again touched and kissed for hours, as if trying memorize every patch of each other's bodies. When deep in the night he finally entered her, for the first time she didn't feel any trace of anxiety, only desire, and pleasure, and love.

 


End file.
